Give Me A Chance
by Minttown1
Summary: COMPLETED - After Grissom is hurt on a case, he and Sara need to make some decisions. Also, Sara is forced to reflect on her past and make peace.
1. Chapter One

In the context of a Las Vegas hospital waiting room at two in the morning, the three of them did not draw much attention.

Warrick sat in the chair in the corner, his elbows propped on his knees and his head in his hands. His best friend and colleague Nick sat across from him, eyes expressionlessly focused on some inane late-night talk show playing above Warrick's head. Sara was sitting, or more accurately was crumpled, beside Nick, her head on his shoulder and his coat around her shoulders. She had finally fallen asleep after Warrick had brought her something to drink.

Their boss Gil Grissom was somewhere in the hospital. He and Sara had been working a case that evening. The period of extra caution following the Holly Gribbs incident was long since ended, and Grissom was left alone in the house while Sara went out to his Tahoe to retrieve a forgotten kit.

~*~*~*~*~

__

Sara jogged back up the driveway and ducked under the crime scene tape. She picked her way carefully through the hallway and called to Grissom, "I got it, Gris! And I think I figured out what the victim -- Oh my God." She pulled her gun and ran over to where Grissom lay on the floor, a puddle of blood spreading out from under his black jacket.

She quickly made a compress and tried to stop the bleeding, but she knew there was not much she could do. She then pulled out her cell and managed to dial 911, never taking her eyes off the door at the end of the hall. "There's been a stabbing at -- shit -- oh, 124 Greenville Street. It's...it's bad." She listened to the dispatcher for a few moments, then hung the phone up.

Grissom was looking up at her, panic in his eyes. She lightly touched the very top of his head. "Someone's coming."

"Need to talk to you," Grissom tried to say, before starting to cough.

"Shh. Shh, you're going to be fine Don't talk. Shh."

~*~*~*~*~

"Do you have any idea how to contact Grissom's family?" Nick finally asked Warrick.

  
"I have no idea, man. I never asked him about that. Brass said the numbers in his file are outdated. I can't find Catherine." Warrick sighed. "I never thought this would happen. How did this happen?"

"I'm not sure what Sara was saying earlier. She was getting something and when she came back, she found him." Nick's arm tightened reflexively around Sara's shoulders.

  
Warrick looked at Sara. "She looks like that girl in high school who used to sit in home room and cry every morning."  
  
"What?" Nick asked, confused by the unusual comment.

"It's not important," Warrick said, shrugging. "I'm going to go try Catherine again." He stood up and walked slowly to the pay phones by the door.

Nick's leg seemed to suddenly cramp and he shifted his body. Sara woke with a start. "Where's Warrick?" she asked.

"Trying to call Catherine. Here, go back to sleep." Nick spread his coat over Sara's shoulders again and tried to ease her against his chest.

"He shouldn't be alone," Sarah said, shrugging off the coat and standing up. "They wouldn't let me go back with him because I'm not family. I don't even know if he's alive. I've made it through a lot, but I can't take this waiting. I need to know if he's okay."

Finally she took the seat next to Nick again and let him hold her. She just wanted to feel human. She didn't want to hide anymore.  
  
She was tired of being hurt and feeling ashamed because of bad people hurting her and the people she loved. She let Nick hold her and tried to sleep. If Grissom survived -- which he was going to, he had to -- she had some decisions to make.

She was no longer dreading facing the situation. She just wanted the opportunity.


	2. Chapter Two

When Grissom woke up, he thought for a second that he was dead. Seeing nothing but white after one's last waking thought was that one was dying had a bad effect on one's mind.

It did not help that the entire staff of the recovery room was in the opposite corner, trying to get an outraged man away from his wife who had just come out of surgery herself. He had been sitting by her bed stroking her hand, and suddenly stood up yelling, visibly upsetting his wife.

All Grissom heard was a man screaming that he was going to "kill the bitch" and a woman's voice, weak and hoarse, begging him to wait until they got home to make a scene.

He was just glad Sara had not witnessed whatever was happening in the corner.

Sara.

  
He remembered what happened, suddenly. After working thousands of cases he had surprised himself by forgetting collection vials. Sara had offered to run outside and get the silver-gray case out of back of his vehicle so that he could continue fingerprinting the room. He warned her to be careful, and continued working his way toward the front door through which Sara had just left. The next thing he remembered was a hand clamping over his mouth.

He had things he needed to tell each of his CSIs. Messages he had tried to relay through Sara. Thank Catherine for sticking around in my life longer than anyone else. Tell Warrick not to blow it just because I'm not there to breathe over his shoulder. Tell Nick that I know, Catherine told me, that I'm sorry and for him to get help, because he is too good of a person to let something eat him up inside. And for Sara to quit trying to save the world and just do something to make herself happy. He was glad now that he had not managed to tell all of this to Sara. If he was going to make it, he did not want to have acted so uncharacteristic. He wondered if it was okay for people like him not to actually say anything. People should just know, you should not have to sound like an idiot. He hated awkward conversation and uncertainty.

A nurse came over to him. She looked to be in her late twenties and had her hair cut in a short brown bob and clipped back from her face with small silver barrettes. She smiled at him and told him apologetically, "You should have had someone over here when you woke up, Mr. Grissom. If Gina's husband hadn't gotten so angry just now...Now, don't try to talk too much, but how are you feeling?"

"Hurts," he answered.

She gave him a look that he could not place. He hated being vulnerable. "Here's your morphine pump, then. You'll have it for a few days. Just hit that button on top. And don't worry, it's programmed not to go above the amount the doctor prescribed."  
  
He knew that. He was tired of the cute nurse. He needed to see someone he knew.

"The doctor should be by to check on you in about an hour, and we'll have you settled in your room by sunrise," the nurse told him. "Meanwhile, my name's Marie, and if you need anything your call button's on the left there by your hand. Try not to move around too much just yet."

"Where's everyone?" he managed to ask.

"What? Oh. Your admissions papers say that you came in without family. Do you have the name of a family member I can call?"

Family? Not in this state, and not that he wanted to see.

"My niece and nephew are in the waiting room," he said, counting on the fact that Sara and at least one of the men had stayed. He could have lied better, but his chest felt so tight. All the same, he managed to add, "And my niece's husband might be with them."

"Okay, Mr. Grissom. I'll get one of the volunteers to run downstairs and try to find them. Try to rest now," Marie told him and walked away.

  
He closed his eyes but still could not keep the glare of the fluorescent lights out of his eyes. It occurred to him that he did not really want them to see him like this. He had not even asked for Catherine, knowing that she was going to be impossible for the others to find. He would have someone call her, if he could remember where he left the number.

The main thought in his mind was that he was glad it had not been Sara who had gotten hurt. She already had so much trouble trusting people. She had already been hurt enough.

~*~*~*~*~

Sara let Nick hold her. Finally feeling some amount of safety and warmth in a human being's arms again. She let the tears come, angry and scared and remorseful tears. "He trusted me _with his life_. It's assumed when we're out together. And I didn't hold up my end. I let him get hurt. God, I am so sorry, Nick." He just held her, lips pressed against the perfectly straight part in her hair on top of her head.

Warrick stood at the row of pay phones by the door and watched. He knew that if Grissom did not make it Sara was going to lose it.

She really did have that same look as a tortured teenager. One who knows that she is holding on to life by a thread. The kind that knew that she was slowly losing control on her life. That if one more thing happened to her, if Dad remarried or if her neighbor moved, she was going to say "screw it" and quit bothering. He understood how kids ended up with drug problems, because he had done the same thing with gambling. He had just lasted a little longer.

He had tried Catherine's house, the lab, and even Lindsay's father. No one knew where she was this weekend. He figured Grissom did. Just one of those unforeseeable things.

He slammed the phone down and tried to stop his shaking hands. It was not just Sara that he was worried about. He was pretty sure he was in trouble too.

~*~*~*~*~

A man who could not have been older than twenty stepped off the elevator and surveyed the scene in front of him. His name was Derek and he was actually a lot younger even than he looked. This was community service work, a graduation requirement. He was supposed to find the niece and nephew of a man he never saw named Gil Grissom. He looked for a man and a woman together, and eventually his eyes settled on the pair in the corner. The man was holding the woman that Derek assumed to be the patient's niece. He was not sure, but he really thought these two looked like brother and sister. He walked over to them and faced Nick, and spoke over Sara's shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir, are you the family of Gil Grissom?"

"Yes," Nick said hesitantly, not knowing what Grissom had said in order to get them together all.

"Well, your uncle asked for his niece and nephew."  
  
Nick wondered if Grissom wanted Sara and Warrick or Sarah and him.

"That's us," Sara said, sitting the rest of the way up and rubbing her eyes.

"Oh, good. I was hoping I hadn't gotten the wrong family," Derek said in a voice that suggested it would not be the first time. "He also asked for your husband, ma'am. Do you know where he is?"

"Yes," Sara said, watching Warrick watch them.

"Okay, then." Derek watched them. "I'll be over by the elevator. Just come over when you find your husband."  
  
"Thank you," Nick told him.

"Of course." And he walked back to the elevator.

Sara and Nick met Warrick halfway through the waiting room. "How is he?" Warrick asked.

"He's alive. He's okay to enough to think of a lie to get us all up there."  
  
Warrick sighed with relief and raised an eyebrow at the same time.

"You and I are married," Sara told him.

"Fun," Warrick said. And the three walked over to where the young man was helping an elderly woman onto the elevator on her way to the maternity ward to see her newborn great-grandson. He turned to face them and gestured into the elevator and followed them inside.

The ride in the elevator was interesting. The woman had decided to show Warrick pictures of the her children and grandchildren. "They said that I'd never see a great-grandchild, but they were wrong. There's a beautiful baby boy up there waiting to see me."  
  
"I'm sure he's as wonderful as all your children and grandchildren have been," Warrick said, having no idea what the proper response was.  
  
"Oh, they just keep getting better," she beamed.

Derek watched the exchange with a smile on his lips. He tried to get more volunteer time on the maternity ward because even on the worst day the joys number higher than the heartbreaks. His attention was drawn to the other side of the elevator, where the patient's niece was squeezing the nephew's hand and he was whispering in her ear. He reached up and gently stroked her hair.

"Congratulations," Warrick said as the woman wheeled herself off the elevator.

"Thank you, and good luck to you. You seem like you have a wonderful family too," she said, waving her hand at the group in the elevator before going down the hall to find the newest member of her family.

The elevator stopped on their floor and Derek stepped off, gesturing for them to follow. They did and he walked to the nurse's station to let them know he had found the patient's family.

He spoke briefly with Marie, a cute nurse who he had a bit of a crush on. "Thank you," she said, patting his arm and making him blush. Warrick thought he looked like Greg right then.

"You can sit down there until I check with the doctors about Mr. Grissom having visitors," Marie said.

"Wait! No one's even told us how he is!" a red-eyed Sara exclaimed as the nurse started to walk away.

Marie turned around. "Oh dear, I guess you haven't spoken with anyone. He's stable now, but I really shouldn't say anything, because it would just be an educated guess. His surgeon makes rounds in about ten minutes. After that you can talk to doctor and maybe even go see your uncle." Marie patted Sara's hand and Sara flinched back against Nick. The nurse watched Sarah's reaction then turned and walked away.

  
The next ten minutes were going to be longer than the last few hours, Sara realized. She chewed on her bottom lip and leaned her head back against the wall. She wished she had never met her boss, while at the same time she did not know what she was going to do if lost him.

She watched the clock.


	3. Chapter Three

Her hair was dirty. She was exhausted. Her head hurt. If that doctor took longer than five more minutes to come talk to them she was going to turn and run.

Sara watched the door to the recovery room. A doctor who she hoped was _the_ doctor had gone in about fifteen minutes ago. He had yet to come back out. She hoped that was not because someone inside was in trouble. Especially not Grissom.

Finally, the same doctor emerged from the recovery room. Marie was hovering at his elbow and pointed to Nick, Sara, and Warrick waiting on the padded orange bench. He walked over to them.

"You're the family for Mr. Grissom?" he asked, the fatigue of the end of a twelve-hour shift evident on his face.

"Yes," Nick said simply.

"I'm Dr. Washington. Mr. Grissom is stable and in recovery. Barring some extreme event, he will survive. His recovery will be long, though. I hope someone is prepared to be responsible for his care." The doctor watched Nick and Warrick both turn uncomfortable and look away.

"He'll be cared for," Sara said immediately.

  
The doctor gave a short nod and continued, "One of you may go in to see him now. Tell one of the nurses and they'll take you in. He is going to be in the hospital for at least a few weeks." The doctor checked his watch. "My shift is over in ten minutes. If anything happens, the nurses will call me. Good night." And he disappeared through a pair of double doors at the end of the hall.

"He did a nice job of telling us practically nothing," Warrick complained before the hall was filled with complete silence again.

The three looked at each other. Finally, Sara covered her mouth with her hand and said, "I'm not going to be the one to go in."

"Why not?" Warrick asked her, surprised.

"Because it's my fault he's in there. One of you."  
  
Warrick stared at Sara but spoke to Nick. "Has to be you, then, man. I'm just her husband."

"Okay," Nick said slowly. "Anything you want me to tell him?"  
  
"Sorry," Sara said. Nick looked at her sympathetically and Warrick gave her an indecipherable look.

"Find out how to contact Catherine, if you can," Warrick said. "And tell him we're here for him."  
  
Nick nodded and walked over to the nurse's station. A minute later he found himself standing beside his sleeping boss's bed. Grissom's face was swollen from being under anesthesia, and he looked pale. He was hooked up to more monitors and IVs than Nick cared to count. He wanted to talk to him, but he didn't want to wake him up. He would not even be sure how to without hurting him. He stood for a moment, silently willing Grissom to wake up. When it became clear that he was going to be sleeping for a while, he walked back into the hall where Sara and Warrick were talking quietly.

"How is he?" Sara asked as soon as she could jump up and walk to Nick.

"He was sleeping. I didn't want to wake him up," Nick said, ignoring the look of disbelief on Sara's face.

Warrick made a decision in the back of his mind. "Nick, give your keys to Sara. I'll give you a ride home. She can stay here with Grissom. If she doesn't talk to him tonight she's not going to be able to make herself."  
  
"What the hell's with the psychology, Warrick?" Sara asked angrily. "You can't just leave me alone in a hospital in the middle of the night."  
  
"She's right, Warrick," Nick said, worried about Sara.

"No, she has a way home if she needs to leave. And she's not alone," Warrick added quietly. "Grissom's here with her." He walked toward the doors. Nick tossed Sara his car keys and a worried look before catching up with his friend. Sara watched them, feeling sick and betrayed.

  
She was also angry about what their action said about Grissom. They did not even care that they were forcing Grissom to depend on the person who did this to him.

She put the keys in her pocket and walked over to the nurse's station.

"Hi," she said to the nurse who had spoken with them all earlier. "Is there any way I could be told when Mr. Grissom is moved to his room so I could go with him?"  
  
"Of course." Marie smiled at her, concerned. "Would you like to go sit with him now? It would be better if he didn't wake up alone again."

Sara shook her head. "I don't want to be the first person he sees when he wakes up. I just want to know where he is. I'll wait out here until he gets moved."

Marie shook her head. "When your uncle woke up earlier he asked me to find you. I think he would like for you to be with him."  
  
Sara looked at the clear, open eyes of the nurse and decided to trust her. She allowed herself to be led to the side of Grissom's bed, and automatically sat in the chair that Marie pulled over from the wall.

"If he wakes up and needs anything, his call button is right there," Marie told Sara, who nodded in reply. The nurse offered her an attempt at a reassuring smile, and Sara thanked her before turning her attention to Grissom.

He looked awful. There was no more tactful way to put it. He was lying seriously hurt and in pain, and it was her fault. She had almost lost everything because of her own carelessness. In a matter of hours her Grissom had gone from being perfectly healthy to needing a huge amount of care. She had every intention of doing as much as he would let her to help.

  
Assuming, of course, that she could bring herself to talk to him. And that he would want to talk to her.

She had no idea that was not angry with her. In her mind it was entirely her fault, and she could not see him seeing it any differently. It seemed so clear.

The enormity of the situation was dawning on her. Grissom was not going to be back in his office in a week. When he eventually did get back to work, if he did, she might have already lost her job. Her last logical connection to Gil Grissom. Now that she was fairly sure he was going to survive, she was realizing that she might lose him anyway.

She sat in the chair staring at her hands, acknowledging that they had probably saved a man's life that evening. She felt her mind pulled in a hundred directions. She did not want to be sitting there. She wanted Warrick or Nick or, even better, Catherine to be sitting here while she packed her bags and got out of Las Vegas. She wanted to run.

Even with all of this and more going round for round in her mind, she somehow slept.

~*~*~*~*~

Sara was awakened by an orderly and a nurse who were getting ready to take Grissom to his room. They also woke him up as they worked, and he found himself struggling to focus his eyes and his mind on the things around him.

He noticed Sara as she raised herself up out of her chair and stood looking at him with a panicked expression. His eyes cleared for a moment as they locked on hers, and she offered him a small smile. It was all she could do.

It was another forty-five minutes before he was settled in his new room and everyone except for Sara had left. She stood in the corner fidgeting with the unraveling lip of the paper cup she had brought her coffee back in five minutes before. He tried to care that she was seeing him like this, but he could not bring himself to even notice. He watched her curiously, as well as his unfocused eyes would allow him to, waiting for her to say something. The painkillers were having an awful effect, muddling his brain worse than it had been right after he woke up from surgery.

"We couldn't find Catherine," she finally said to her coffee cup.

"Okay."  
  
"I'm so sorry," she told him, and even in the virtual darkness in the room he could make out her eyes shining wet with tears again.

"Don't," he said, hoping the word was enough to let her know that he did not blame her. It would be wrong to, at least in his opinion. He blamed himself as her superior for letting her break protocol, and he mostly blamed the bastard that did it, whoever it turned out to be. He wondered who was investigating _this_ case. She saved his life.

"I let you get attacked and you tell me not to apologize." She shook her head; she could not accept that he would not blame her. "I can not believe how badly I failed you. I'm going to lose my job, but it's not even important, because I've already lost your trust. I almost cost your life! Because of me we all almost lost you. I really --"

"Sara!" he cut her off in a surprisingly strong voice. "Not your fault. You're safe." She looked at him in surprise, and wondered what he meant by 'safe'. His eyes were now closed and he looked worse than he had ten minutes before. They really should not have been having that conversation so soon, she realized now. It was just hard after beating herself for hours not to want to immediately talk to him about it. "Sit down," he managed. She carefully sat down in the chair beside his bed and he offered her his one hand that was fortunately free of tubes and wires. She held it carefully in both of her own and stroked it until he fell back to sleep.

So he was not upset with her. He still trusted her. He would probably even fight for her job. Still, it did not matter, because she blamed herself enough for a thousand people.


	4. Chapter Four

__

This is not the ideal way to wake up next to a woman, Grissom thought sarcastically to himself as his eyes focused on the sleeping woman in the chair beside him. She was somehow still sitting upright, one of those tiny little human phenomena that had fascinated him for five minutes until he found out the science behind it. Not a whole lot of wonder involved when you realized that it was just muscle that kept a sleeping jock in his desk.

It was actually after sunrise now he noticed, looking at the glowing blinds. He did not want to wake Sara up, but someone needed to contact Catherine and let her know what had happened. He pulled his hand away from where it and Sara's rested together on the bed railing, and she woke up.

"Are you okay?" she asked immediately.

He nodded and tried unsuccessfully to clear his throat. When he stopped coughing, she brushed his hair back from his forehead, and asked him, "Can I do anything?"

He nodded. "Go home. Call Catherine, number's on my desk. Sleep."

"Okay," she said. She played with the bright red cartoon dragon charm hanging from Nick's keychain. She would have to ask him about that later. "Should I call Warrick or Nick to come sit with you?"

"No. I'm fine," he told her. She looked at him worriedly, so he found her hand again and squeezed it gently. "It's okay. Thank you, Sara."

"Of course," she said. She stood and turned to leave. He was uncomfortable, and she realized that she was too. Still, she turned back to face him and leaning over, gently kissed his cheek. He held her arm when she began to stand up, seeming to want to tell her something. She watched his face, but instead of speaking he let her go and closed his eyes.

She continued watching him until she noticed a tear on his cheek. Embarrassed for both of them, she slipped out the door.

  
~*~*~*~*~

Sara parked Nick's car in the lab parking lot and looked around. She did not really want to go in there and answer questions she had yet to figure out herself. _Just take a deep breath, run in and run back out._

She got out of the car and flashed her ID card to the receptionist. While not quite running, she was walking quickly enough that no one tried to stop her to talk until she passed Greg's work station.

  
"Hey, Sara!" he said, jumping up and almost sending an expensive microscope crashing to the floor. She stopped and waited for him, considering him an ally at the office if anyone was. "How is he?"

"He's going to be alright." She stopped and wet her lips. She suddenly felt thirsty. "Who's investigating the case anyway?"  
  
"The boss from hell. I hate working dayshift."

"Ecklie's working Gris's case?" Sara scoffed.

"Yeah, and the one that you two were working on when you were there. He's been ranting all morning about your shift abandoning your work," Greg told her, looking uncomfortable to have to share this information.

Sara shook her head. "Ecklie can go to hell."

"I guess," Greg said, rubbing his neck.  
  
"How is the investigation going?"  
  
Greg shrugged, and told her, "I have no idea. He has his cronies drop samples off and I give him the reports. I could do my job a lot better if he would tell me what it is I'm analyzing."  
  
"Yeah. I have to go call Catherine, maybe find Ecklie. I'll call you if anything happens," she said. She looked completely exhausted.  
  
"Same here. Call if you need anything, or to talk, or...you know," he offered, embarrassed. It was not one of his usual clumsy passes, she knew, it was a genuine offer.

She nodded at him and then left him standing, staring after her. She appreciated his thoughtfulness, but had no idea what to say.

When Sara reached Grissom's office, she was surprised to find Ecklie and his team going through his desk.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, stunned.

Ecklie looked up from the date book he was flipping through. "Looking for anyone with motive for trying to murder our friend Gil. There are people working on the scene and any leads in that direction, and we are checking here for other possibilities."  
  
"Am I supposed to believe that?"

"You know that it could have been anyone. Whoever was responsible for the original crime at the scene was probably long gone by the time you two got started. Someone else could have followed you there. It could have even been you." He said the last in a voice that told her that he did not really think so, but that he was trying to provoke her. After the evening that she had, she could not help but to take the bait.

"I would never -- How could you think that?" She hated Ecklie. He reminded her of someone. "I could never do anything to hurt a man that I -- that I work with. For. I stayed with him, I called the paramedics. If I really wanted to hurt him --," she stopped for a moment and stared at him. Then she asked quietly, "What the hell is wrong with you?

  
She would wonder later if it was her tirade that caused it, or if Ecklie planned to do it all along and just wanted to upset her first.

"Give me your identification and your gun. You are on suspension until this matter is settled. Hopefully we will get some other leads, because right now you are the second suspect on our list."  
  
"After the painfully obvious one!" she said.

"Your error in judgment alone is reason enough to suspend you." He pulled two evidence bags from a pile inside his case. "Your things?"

She shook her head, but carefully placed her weapon and identification in the bags. "I need Catherine Willows's phone number. It was supposed to be on his desk."

"When we find it she'll be notified," Ecklie told her indifferently before turning back to his examination of the date book. "If you're not out of the building in fifteen minutes, I'm going to call security."

Feeling slightly numb, Sara found her way to the locker room and went inside. She only had a few things in her locker, and she really only had one that she wanted to keep. It was a really good picture of Grissom, Warrick, Nick, and Catherine all sitting together in the break room on an insanely slow night a few months before. Grissom had gotten annoyed at her "improper use of equipment" and returned to his office. It had been nice to see everyone together in one place for a little while.

She took the picture and carefully put it in the middle of a book that was sitting at the bottom of her locker. Not caring about anything else, and truly wanting to not completely abandon her claim to her job, she relocked the locker with all her other belongings still inside.

~*~*~*~*~

__

Things could be worse, Sarah thought as she entered her apartment. All her life, her mood had alternated between hopeless pessimism and desperate optimism, and she really needed to focus on the latter more often.

She carefully took the picture out and placed it in wooden edge of the bulletin board hanging next to the door. She had had the frame more than half her life, but the cork part had been replaced many times. Black magic marker filled the frame where she had ticked off the days until graduation, first from high school and later from college. She did not really have anything to count down to the end of now.

  
She realized that the constant desire for one part of her life to give way to another was based on the hopes that everything about her life and circumstances would change just because she had managed to escape to somewhere else. Looking back, that was the basis behind her permanent move to Las Vegas as well.

  
She really did not like it here. It was too hot during the day and too cold at night. The cases seemed so much worse than they had other places she has worked. She did not know anyone and never really had the opportunity to meet anyone. Well, that was not necessarily true. She just never felt comfortable putting roots down anywhere. If the necessity of personnel files did not exist, no one in the state of Nevada would even know her middle name.

She was really tired of living day to day. She needed something to look forward to. She needed to make plans. She needed a future. She needed something to keep her from slipping.

And she knew she would never work toward any of that if she did not force herself to face some things from her past.

~*~*~*~*~

Sara had spent most of the summers of her childhood staying with her mother's sister Chloe and her husband Jake. She did not really mind, because by the time a school year came to the close she was anxious to get out of town and away from people. Her aunt and uncle owned two horses, and she would spend most of her summer days riding. When she was fourteen she entered competitions, and the other kids at the stables respected her, and she enjoyed their company.

Early the following summer, in June, her Aunt Chloe gave birth to a little girl, who Uncle Jake named Stephanie. Eager to help her aunt, and amazed at the opportunity to be a part of this tiny new life, Sara more or less abandoned riding and stayed at the house, babysitting and helping her aunt with everyday tasks.

By the end of the summer she had witnessed more than one screaming match between the baby's parents, during which she would quietly take the baby to the nursery in the back of the house. She wondered if this had always happened and she had never been there to see, or if this was something new from the stress of parenthood. She hated knowing the effects their behavior was already having on her baby cousin.

She came again the next summer, when she was sixteen. Her aunt was waiting at the airport with Stephanie awkwardly held in her arms and a bulky cast on her left wrist. "The bastard's hitting you now, isn't he?" Sara greeted her aunt.

"Don't swear in front of Stephanie," the woman scolded. "And, no."

"How did you get hurt?"

"The horses. Are you going to ride this year? One of the boys at the stable asked when you were getting in town this year. John. You remember him from the bonfire last August, right?" her aunt rambled.

Sara had gotten angry and ignored her. She spent the next three months keeping her cousin away from the baby's own parents. The little girl said 'Sara' before she ever said 'Dad'.

When she was seventeen she worked as a camp counselor to prevent returning to the house. She finally returned in May of her senior year of high school. She missed her graduation to attend her aunt's funeral.

~*~*~*~*~

__

After Aunt Chloe's burial, Sara and her parents returned to her uncle's house for the night.

__

Sara could not sleep. A few hours before her aunt had been buried in her husband Jake's family plot.

She walked quietly down the familiar hall and peeked into the door of her cousin's bedroom. She was not quite three years old yet, and Sara knew she would probably not be able to remember her mother in a couple years.

She continued through the house to the kitchen. Her uncle was sitting at the table. She did not notice her mother, also unable to sleep, standing in the corner filling a glass with milk. Sara sat across from her uncle at the table and said, almost conversationally, "You killed Aunt Chloe, didn't you?"

"Sara!" her mother exclaimed from the corner. "How could you ask him that? We're all hurting, but you need to be considerate of everyone's feelings!"

  
"If you'd ever talked to your own sister, you would have realized that she wasn't okay! He's been beating her for two years now, at least. Did you wait until Stephanie was out of the room, Jake? Or did you let her see what you were doing too?"  
  
"Sara," her mother begged, "Please don't do this. I'm sorry, Jake."  
  
"It's okay," Jake said, eyeing Sara from across the table. "Really. She's upset. It's a shock for her, I'm sure. We all loved Chloe, and we need to pull together if we're going to make it through this. I'm not angry at Sara, I'm just sorry that she feels the need to hurt me to deal with her grief. I guess that if this is how it has to be I can accept that."

Tears burned at Sara's eyes. She felt so helpless. "Please, Jake. I'm not even asking you to turn yourself in. It wouldn't do anyone any good now. Just...Admit what you did. Let me take Stephanie back home. I don't trust you with her. Damnit!" Sara stood up and knocked her chair into the refrigerator.

"Sara. Please." Her mother's voice again, from beside the counter.

"Mom," Sara said. She shook her head. She felt so sick.

"Let me talk to Sara alone," her uncle told her mother. "She's not going to calm down if she feels like she's outnumbered."

"But the things she's saying to you, Jake..."  
  
"It's okay."

Her mother looked at the scene before her, and eventually picked up her glass and retreated back upstairs.

"You can't do anything, Sara," he told her when he heard the door to the guest room closing.

"I was right, though, wasn't I?"

"Go home in the morning. Forget about it."  
  
"This is not supposed to really happen," Sara moaned. She stood in the kitchen feeling absurd, dressed in her white nightgown and crying in front of the man who killed her aunt.

"Sara," he said, reaching out her hand to her, making a move to comfort her, of all things.

"Don't touch me. Ever," she said, backing into the dining room. She backed into the table and fell down. Why did they have two tables with chairs around both? There was not even a door between the kitchen and dining room. "Why did you do it?"

"I didn't mean to actually kill her," Jake said, standing over her and reaching a hand down to her.

Sara stared at his hand in disbelief. "You really did it. God, you killed her and now you're going to raise her little girl."  
  
Jake's eyes looked into her own. "Go to sleep. You can apologize to your mother and me in the morning. You're going to look nuts if you don't, Sara." He offered his hand again and she shook her head. He walked past her up the stair. She heard his door close.

She spent the rest of the night on the floor in her cousin's room, looking through pictures and waiting for her cousin to wake up. When she finally did, Sara took her locket off and wrote "Love, Sara" and her parents' phone number on the back of a picture of Aunt Chloe. She showed it to the little girl then doubled the long chain and clasped it behind the girl's neck.

~*~*~*~*~

Not a day passed when Sara did not wonder if she could have stopped her aunt's death. And, even worse, she was forced to always wonder if her cousin was still okay. She would be fifteen by now, the age Sara was when she was born.

When she finished her shower it was barely noon. She put on a pair of cotton pajama pants and a white t-shirt then fought a brush through her hair. Finally she crawled into her bed. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she was not going to lose another person she loved just because she was scared. She could not run away again, not with this much at stake.


	5. Chapter Five

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _Thanks to everyone who has been reading this._

_

* * *

_

It was about six o'clock in the evening, according the voice coming from the television in Grissom's room. Along with the discovery of the television controller hooked to the rail of the bed had come the discovery that the hours he worked were not depriving him of any quality entertainment.

One of the nurses who circulated through the ICU popped her head in the door and clicked her tongue. "You should be resting, Mr. Grissom. Do you need anything while you're awake?"

"I can't reach the phone," he told her. "If you could move it for me I would appreciate it."

She walked around his bed and moved the phone to the overhanging table. He offered an ignored thank-you as she walked out of the room. Nursing was a busy career and a stressful one, even for someone who loved their job. There had been times that he wished he had gone the route of many of his college classmates, and just gotten a teaching position at a university or even a high school. As much as he loved his job, as much satisfaction as he got from the idea of making some kind of difference in the world, he acknowledged the stress of his work. He did not want to burn out.

Thinking about career burnout always made his thoughts turn to Sara. Warrick had had a breakdown of another kind, and Nick and Catherine seemed pretty well put together. He knew that was not one hundred percent true, but if nothing else they could hide how they were feeling better than Sara could.

She was very passionate. She would get very upset whenever the "bad guy" got away. _In another lifetime under different circumstances_, he thought to himself, as the door opened.

"You have a visitor," a different nurse told him. "Should I send him in?"

"Yes," he said.

The nurse left and a moment later Conrad Ecklie entered.

Ecklie was one of the last people that Grissom wanted to have see him in the hospital. It was difficult to have anyone see him in such a exposed position. It was worse to have someone who he truly disliked. He respected the man as one of the best forensics experts in the state, if not the country, but he hated the man.

"Hello," Grissom said. He knew it was only a matter of time before he would have to answer questions. He just assumed that Ecklie would send one of his flunkies to do it.

"Hello. How are you feeling? We need to discuss last evening."

"Okay," Grissom offered in response to both the question and the statement.

"I suspended that girl, and I would appreciate it if you did not interfere."

"What girl?" Grissom asked, truly not knowing who Ecklie was referring to.

"Ms. Sidle."

"Come on. I'm experienced. There was no reason for her to even be there, let alone in the same room. I'm sure you've been left alone at crime scenes."

Ecklie waved his hand dismissively. "She's also a suspect." Grissom's eyes widened. "Don't worry, she hasn't been arrested. If any evidence is found linking her to the crime, or even suggesting motive, she will be taken into custody."

"Sara didn't try to kill me. I know that for a fact."

"'Sara'? How are you so sure?"

For a second Grissom wondered why the idea of using the first name of a coworker would seem so suspicious, then he realized that Ecklie probably did not bother. Last names were better for barking orders. "I know it wasn't Sara, because the attacker was a man."

"Did you see him?"

"No. But when someone is standing beside you, you can tell if it's a man or a woman." _That_, Grissom thought, _and I know how she smells and feels now. Because she got upset that night and she wouldn't calm down. The night we couldn't prove that those two women were killing their husbands. At the end of her shift she was still angry, so I wanted to take her mind off of it. I took her out. Then I took her home. I didn't mean for anything to happen. She said, 'Thank you." But she didn't get out of the car. The next day she was mercifully practical about it. And she never really got angry about what happened. She was sad, if anything. I know I was. To take for a few hours what you wish you could have. If you weren't so scared, if she weren't so hurt. If I thought I could pull off a relationship at all. If I could tell her that I cared about her. That I was 'interested' in her, of all things. I'm surprised she wasn't angry that I acted like it didn't happen. It just didn't seem as important as what we already have. Maybe she saw that. Maybe she saw how scared I was. Maybe she was scared._ "It wasn't Sara."

"You're a lousy supervisor, Gil. A good supervisor wouldn't go to bat for their staff. You should keep them from getting in trouble. And when they screw up, you should be first in line to show them the consequences."

"Do you want to ask me about what happened? Sara was outside. I was dusting for prints. I wasn't careful enough, I was concentrating too much, I didn't hear him come up behind me. I felt his hand over my mouth and--" Grissom faltered.

Ecklie sighed. "Were you followed?"

Grissom shook his head. "No. The house was out of the way. I would have noticed if there was another car on the road with us."

"Can you think of anyone with a reason to attack you?"

"Whoever was originally at the scene. That's all I can think of."

"And you really don't think there was any chance that it was Sidle? She's the other logical suspect."

"I'd believe it was you before I would believe it was Sara," Grissom said evenly.

"I'll let you know if I have any more questions."

"You could call."

Ecklie left without even wishing Grissom good health. It did not really matter. Grissom's mind was miles away and a few weeks in the past.

Sara stared through the windshield with dread.

"Thanks, Gris."

"You're welcome. Try to remember the ones you get. Not the ones that got away."

He thought he heard her laugh bitterly, but she was looking out the side window now and the engine was running. "The ones that get away are the ones who are still a threat. They're the ones who warrant thinking about."

"We did what we could."

"Maybe I didn't do everything I could," she said cryptically.

He wondered what she meant.

"I can't sleep at night anymore...I swear, I'm losing it.

"I know it can feel like that," he said quickly, "but you have to remember--"

"I'm being serious! I--I can handle my current life. It's everything else!"

"Then make it through tonight. Get some sleep. Then work through tomorrow when it comes." He was awful at calming down upset people. Especially women. With men you could usually tell them to shut up and they would calm down.

"You know who else lives their lives like that, Grissom? People who are being hurt every day. Or prisoners. Not normal people. Normal people want more than that. It's hard to live life in such a stupid fragile thing that one case can make you lose it." She angrily wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. "Life is too hard sometimes. I'm going in." She pushed open her car door and got out. She was walking to the door of her building when she heard Grissom's car door slam.

"You're not going to so something stupid, Sara, are you?"

She turned around and looked at him, horrified. "When I said I wouldn't take a life, that included my own."

"I wasn't saying--"

"Yeah, actually, you must have been. I'm going in," she repeated angrily, and turned back toward the door.

"Can I come with you?" he called.

"If you feel the need to," she said without looking at him.

A minute later she was sitting on her couch with a champagne glass while he stood behind her kitchen counter watching her.

"However you feel today, you'll feel different soon, okay?" he said, still worried.

"Please stop with the psychology. If you really want to make me feel better--Never mind." She laughed, and he was relieved to hear the sound.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's stupid. I'd go as far as to say it's inappropriate."

"What?" he pressed.

"It's stupid. My neck hurts."

"You want me to rub your neck?" he asked, all cold practicality.

"Not with that look on your face."

"What look?"

"Like you'd rather dissect me than touch me." She saw the sudden hurt look on Grissom's face. The same one he had had when she told him that she wished she was like him, that she did not feel anything. Hurt was not exactly the word.

"I should leave," he said.

"No!" She jumped up and walked to where he was standing. She put her arms around him. "Thank you." She moved her hands to his hair and slowly kissed him. As soft and sweet as she could. And even as she was doing it having no idea why. Just knowing that it felt nice, and it felt right.

Her interpretation of the rest of the night was the same. No excuse for it, except that they wanted to. And that was enough for both of them right then.

"Gris?" Sara said lightly from the doorway. She did not want to wake him, but she was pretty sure he was already awake.

"Yeah." He turned his head to look at her. She was wearing dark blue jeans and a deep blue sweater. The top half of her hair was pulled back in a brown barrette, and the rest laid on her shoulders. "You look nice."

"I have no idea why I decided to wear what I'm wearing," she said, smiling, obviously pleased.

"Ecklie suspended you."

"Yeah."

"He's going to go through my house, Sara. Possibly yours."

"I know. That's protocol, victim and suspect."

"He's going to find out."

"No. I don't see how."

"He'll find out because I was stupid."

"What do you mean?"

"I keep a journal," Grissom admitted.

"You put having sex with me in your _journal_?"

"Yes."

She sighed and sat down beside the bed. "That doesn't make me look any less guilty."

"I could get fired for this too. With Ecklie involved."

"We should have known better." She was angry at both of them.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked.

"No. I'm an adult. I messed up. It's not your responsibility."

"I don't regret making love to you."

She ducked her head. "Please don't talk about it like that. And if you get fired or I end up in jail, you'll regret it."

"Do you?"

"Yes, but I have a reason."

"What reason?"

"I'm not discussing this with you tonight. Please, let it go, at least until you're out of the hospital."

"You're not going to tell me."

"No, I'm not. Not yet," she told him. "I didn't try to kill you," she added after a few moments of quiet. "I guess I should tell you that."

"I know."

"Okay." She nodded. "Maybe I'll tell you tomorrow. I probably should. When's Catherine due back in town?"

"Tomorrow morning. I just remembered. Could you pick her up at the airport?"

"Yeah. I want to talk to her anyway." Sara's mind was going a mile a minute.

She needed to talk to someone other than Grissom.

Then she needed to tell him too.

Things were so complicated.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," she told him, and walked out of the room.

He watched her leave. He was worried, but he knew that she meant it when she said she was not going to tell him what was going on. He watched the ceiling and waited for her to return.


	6. Chapter Six

Sara walked quickly down the hall just moments after leaving Grissom's room.

She needed to be outside. She could not breathe in hospitals. Every time she was in one it was worse.

She did not wait for the elevator. She found a stairwell that she figured she probably should not be in and ran down the flights of stairs to the ground floor. She exited through a side door and found herself in the courtyard of the hospital. It always amused her that some hospitals had gardens or courtyards.

When the door slammed behind her a man turned and looked at her. He dropped his cigarette and put it out.

The man stared at Sara. She was out of breath. He wondered if she was okay.

"I hate hospitals," she offered the bewildered man beside her.

"So do I."

"My best friend, not that that's saying much, almost died last night."

"I'm sorry. My wife's losing her battle with cancer. I love her but I hate being here."

"I'm sorry."

"She's made her peace with God. She's okay with it. It's all very bad movie-of-the-week. She keeps saying she's just worried about me."

"That's nice. That she's not terrified, I mean. Never mind, that came out entirely wrong."  
  
"No, I know what you were trying to say."

"Sorry."  
  
"Don't worry about it." He took a deep breath. "You look like you need to vent."

"Yeah."

"You can. I don't know you. I'm never going to see you again."  
  
"I don't handle emotions well."  
  
"So? What's the biggest problem in your life?"  
  
"I'm a suspect in an attempted murder investigation, but it wasn't me."

"Your best friend?" Sara nodded. He continued, "Hmm. Anything more manageable?"

"I think I'm pregnant."

"Oh. My wife was pregnant a few years ago and we didn't know until after she started treatment. She lost the baby."

"Wow. I'm sorry."

"Can't be helped now. It hurts less and less every day." The man shrugged. "Are you with the potential father?"  
  
"Same man again."

"Wow."

"And no."

"Hmm."

"Yeah."

The man's pager beeped. "I have to go. Good luck."  
  
"You too," Sara offered.

He nodded and gave Sara a small smile before going inside.

~*~*~*~*~

Sara unlocked her apartment door and slipped inside. She had gone back to Grissom's room long enough to find out Catherine's arrival time and gate number and to say 'good night', then left. She wanted to get away from everyone. She wandered around her apartment and finally turned on her neglected computer.

While she waited for it to turn on she wandered into her kitchen and grabbed a glass of apple juice and a bag of graham crackers. It was a weird snack that she liked at night.

She grabbed the afghan off the back of her couch and pulled it around her shoulders while she waited for her slow phone connection to dial up. It never seemed worth the money to update it for all the more time she had to spend on the internet.

She signed in to her personal email and deleted all the newsletters and junk mail from the last two weeks. She went through the few remaining mails. An article that Nick had sent her. A nice letter from her college roommate about some of the people they had pulled all-nighters with in college._ Yeah, some people outgrow that eventually_, she thought.

The last email she came across was from her father.

__

Sara,

Hello, hun. I thought I'd let you know how we all are here, since your mother and I get the machine so often. Maybe you get a chance to check this.

Your mother is okay. She's upsetting because she's turning fifty-five soon. Do you think you might be able to fly here for a few days? Anyway, she doesn't seem to understand that her health is the important thing, not her age.

I am doing well. I hope you are too. Try to call some time.

We have had a guest with us the last few weeks. Do you remember your cousin Stephanie? Your mother's sister Chloe's daughter? She called one day after all this time and asked if she could stay with us. Jake told us that if we could handle her we were welcome to take her for a while. Apparently just a few weeks before she contacted us, things got bad between them. She has seemed fine since she got here, though. Maybe it's just an age thing. She is fifteen now.

I wish I could write more, but the truth is there is not much to tell. We love you, and I hope you come visit for your mother's birthday.

Your father,

"Dad"

P.S. Your cousin was asking about you. Just about who Sara was, not really about you. I figure she heard your name somewhere, but did not remember you. That's not a surprise. She was so young last time we went to visit Jake. ~Dad

So Stephanie was okay. Not that Sara trusted her parents to be able to tell when someone was in crisis, but if nothing else she was in a safe place now. Sara felt better.

It was nice to hear from her father. She loved her mother. But her father was always the parent she felt closer to, even if she rarely talked to him her entire life. She wondered if that was normal.

She sat in front of the glowing computer screen, her father's letter still open in front of her. The graham crackers were the honey kind instead of the cinnamon kind. She was still tired, even though she had really woken up only a few hours before.

She logged off the internet then told the computer to shut down and clicked the monitor off. It was about a fifty-fifty shot if the tower would actually shut itself down.

She took the barrette out of her hair and stared at herself in the mirror.

__

I am still Sara. Even if I am probably pregnant with Grissom's baby and suspected in his attempted murder.

I've been through worse.

~*~*~*~*~

Catherine stepped into the brightly lit airport. She spent about forty-five minutes looking for Grissom before noticing Sara in the corner.

"What's going on?" Catherine asked. Sara did not answer, and Catherine snapped her fingers in front of the younger woman's face.

Sara started. "What?"  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
"Grissom got attacked at a scene the night before last."  
  
"Oh my god."  
  
"He's going to be okay, though."  
  
"That's the important thing."

  
"Yeah. Yeah, it is. Can we go?"

"Yeah." Catherine nodded and followed Sara to the car.

When they had been driving for a few minutes, Catherine said, "Sara, you don't look very good."

  
"Well, Grissom got attacked because I screwed up, then I found out I'm a suspect and Ecklie suspended me. It's been a lousy few days, and I already had problems before Grissom got hurt."

"Okay."

Sara had wanted to talk to Catherine. She had no idea who else to talk to. But the longer they spent in the car the more Sara remembered why she did not turn to Catherine. She was a great woman, one that Sara might even want to be more like. But Sara did not like her.

"Can I talk to you about something?" Sara asked.

"Yes."

"I think I might be pregnant."

"You think?"

"Yeah. Or my body is really out of whack."  
  
"You're probably pregnant."  
  
"I know."

"You should find out for sure."

"I'm going to."

They were both silent for a few minutes, then Catherine quietly asked, "Do you want me to stay with you?"

"Don't worry about it. You should probably go see Grissom. I'll be fine."  
  
"Do you want me to call Nick for you?"

Sara laughed. "Why would I want Nick with me?"

"You seem to trust him."

"Yeah. He was a huge help to me that night." She realized that she was talking about it like it was a long time ago.

"He's an amazing man."

"Yes...I don't want him with me when I found out if I'm pregnant, though."  
  
"It's a huge shock either way. I'd be happy to stay with you while you find out."

They were stopped at a traffic light, and Sara turned to look at Catherine's face. It was a genuine offer. She was getting more than her fair share of those. "If you don't mind."

Catherine sighed with relief. She worried about Sara. Too proud. She did not want her to get hurt because she would not ask for help. "It will be okay."  
  
"Yeah," Sara replied as the cars in front of her began to move again. _I feel like a scared teenager_, Sara thought._ Like I need my older sister to bail me out of something...I hate needing anyone._

Catherine could detect a note of fear in Sara's usually calm voice. That was the reason Catherine was not on her way home. She remembered being in this situation. And it was terrifying, even though she was under much better circumstances than Sara was right now. Catherine had been married and had a career. Sara's present situation could not be much less stable than it was.

Sara started to say something but stopped. She was worried but felt safer, albeit more embarrassed, to have Catherine with her.

Things were going to be fine. For now, at least.


	7. Chapter Seven

"You all right?" Catherine asked Sara a little later.

"I already knew," Sara said, flipping through a date book sitting on her coffee table. She could not keep her hands still.

"That wasn't what I asked."

"I know. It wasn't a surprise or anything." Sara gestured vaguely toward the bathroom door. "I knew already."

"I figured you did. You know how far along you are?"

"Eight weeks."

Catherine sat looking at the younger woman for a few minutes. Finally, she asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Tell the father."

"Then?"

"Go visit my mother for her birthday," Sara said, standing up.

Catherine sighed. "That's not what I meant, Sara."

"I know. I have to get ready to leave this evening. You should go see Grissom."

"Will you call me if you need to talk?" Catherine asked as she carried her glass to Sara's sink.

"Yes," Sara lied.

"Good. You'll be okay." Catherine gave Sara a quick hug and left.

Sara wanted to scream. This was not the time for uncharacteristic affection. She was thankful that her apartment was empty. She picked up the phone and dialed her parent's phone number.

"Hello, Harold Sidle speaking."

"Hi, Dad."

"Sara. How are you doing, sweetie?"

Sara found herself smiling at her father's voice. "Awful, Dad. How are you?"

"We're all pretty good here. But what's wrong?"

"A lot." Sara closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She could hear her voice getting thicker. "I'm pregnant, and I might end up in prison." She could almost see her dad shaking his hand.

"Wow. I don't know what to say about the baby. And why are you going to prison?"

"I'm not. I might be. I don't...I didn't actually do what I'm being accused of. But my boss was injured at work and there's speculation that I might have been involved. That I might have done it." She started to cry. "But I wouldn't do that to him. We don't always get along but we're still friends. He's the--." She stopped talking.

"Oh, Sara. It--We'll make it work out. Okay?"

She was tired of people saying that. People always say that everything will work out but they don't know. "Okay. Is it okay if I come down a couple days early, maybe spend a week with you guys? Just to get away from everything going on here?"

"Are you allowed to leave there?"

"Yeah. It hasn't gone that far yet."

"No one will mind you taking time off?"

_Considering I've been suspended , no. _"No, I wouldn't have been working this week anyway."

"When should we expect you?"

"Tomorrow some time. If that's all right."

"Of course. I might be at the office, but Mom will be home."

"Don't tell her _anything_. I have to go."

"We love you."

"I love you guys, too."

"You have a visitor, Mr. Grissom. Shall I send her in?"

"Yes. Thank you." He hoped it was Sara. She had seemed so confused the night before. He was worried. And her also wanted to know what she was planning to tell him.

"Hello," Catherine said from the doorway.

"Hello," he said, trying not to seem disappointed.

"I leave for a few days and look what happens."

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

"I will be."

"That's the important part."

"Yeah."

"Sara's in trouble."

"Ecklie's going to have to drop it eventually. There's no evidence, no proof."

Catherine smiled. "Hey, you gave me an actual sentence! Anyway, that wasn't what I was referring to."

"What do you mean?"

"Can't tell you. Anyway, we need to go to bat for her, try to get this fixed. She's under a lot of stress now."

"She always is. Even if it's mostly in her head."

"Do you make observations like that about me?"

"Not to you."

"She's going out of town."

"Why?"

"To visit her mother. But I suspect she just wants to get away."

"Like you did for the last three days."

"Uh huh."

"Is she okay?"

"Don't know. Am I? I don't know." She smiled.

"Hey, boss," said a voice from the doorway.

"Hello," Grissom greeted Warrick as Catherine moved to let him into the room.

"You look a lot better than last time I saw you."

"Feel better too," Grissom responded, wondering when he lost the ability to form complete sentences.

"I'm glad. Is Sara royally pissed at me?"

"Not that she mentioned," Grissom answered.

"Is there a particular reason she would be?" Catherine asked, wondering for a moment if Warrick and Sara had a relationship.

"I made her stay here," Warrick told her.

"You _made_ her?" the other man asked.

"She was ready to bolt."

"Why?"

"Because she's Sara," Warrick said. "Don't get me wrong, I love the girl."

"You all call Sara a girl too often," Catherine said, feeling annoyed and defensive.

"You all talk about me too much," Sara said from the hall. "I'm very pissed at you, Warrick, to answer your question. And I want to talk to Grissom for thirty seconds before I leave if that's okay."

"You're leaving?" Warrick asked.

"It's my mother's birthday."

"Oh," Warrick said. "I love you, take care of yourself," he told her as he hugged her and left the room.

Catherine followed him and raised an eyebrow, to which Sara shook her head.

"When are you coming back," Grissom asked her.

"A week, maybe. It'll be before you're out of the hospital."

"What did you want to tell me?"

"That I'm pregnant," she said quickly. _Like a band-aid._

"Is it mine?"

"Barring amnesia, you are his or her father, yes."

"Have you decided what you're going to do?"

"I wish people would quit asking me that," she sighed. She was getting a headache. The room was completely silent. "I'll tell you when I figure it out. Get better, Gris." She left before he managed to say anything else. She was back in her car less than five minutes after she had parked it in the visitors' parking lot.

"Sara," her mother said as she opened the door. "It's great to see you again."

"Happy early birthday, Mom," Sara replied. They looked at each other for a moment, then her mother waved her inside. "Come in, get something to eat! I hope you didn't drive straight here. That's really not safe."

"I got here."

"Yes. Yes, you're here."

The house, her mother, it was all overwhelming. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and she couldn't believe how long it would be before the whole show could end and she could sleep.

"Let's go into the living room," she heard her mother saying, "and talk about what you've been doing since you moved to Las Vegas." Her mother pronounced the name of the city like she was talking about mildew. Not that Joyce Sidle was in the practice of discussing mildew.

"Same as what I was doing in San Francisco."

"Of course. Hmm. Your father tells me you have news."

"Yes."

"Would you like to share it, or is this a father-daughter only thing?"

"No, it's not..." She shook her head. "I'm pregnant."

"Well, goodness, how did that happen?"

"Happened to you once, didn't it?"

"Yes, when I was an adult and prepared to care for a child."

"I am an adult."

"I know that. I mean, I was settled."

"Settled?"

"Yes. Yes, Sara, settled. Do you really expect to be able to raise a child?"

"If I choose to, I would be able to."

"You can't even take care of yourself. Look at you. I can't believe you let this happen. Then to come here and expect your father and I to just fix it for you."

"I'm not asking you for anything! I came to see you, not to be...Never mind. I want to lie down. I've been driving since last night to see you. I'm exhausted."

"I'm sure your lifestyle hasn't left much time for sleep either," her mother said. "Oh! The guest room's not ready yet. You may lie down in your cousin's room. We gave her your old room. We wanted to leave the guest room open for someone else, and we figured you wouldn't mind, seeing as how you don't like putting down or maintaining roots."

"Of course not," Sara said and disappeared upstairs. She walked slowly down the hall and into the bedroom of her youth. It was almost the same as it had been then, except for the few pieces of furniture and the personal belongings she had taken with her. It looked as if her cousin had taken one small corner of the old dresser to place her belongings on. She hated her mother for giving her permission to invade Stephanie's privacy. She had never had any herself.

She buried her face in the soft pillowcase and fell hard into a deep sleep.

When Sara woke up it was dark outside. There was a teenage girl curled up in a chair in the corner, reading a book. She was pretty, but didn't really act like it. She was dressed for bed, flowing green satin pants and a soft white cotton t-shirt, dark hair pulled back in a loose clip. When she looked up and saw that Sara was awake, she put her book on the desk.

"I hope I didn't wake you up. It's just...Uncle Harold and Aunt Joyce were fighting. I'm Stephanie, by the way."

"No, I just woke up." _I was dreaming about your father again. And my baby's father. And the man who I wish was my baby's father._ "I'm Sara. Um, what were they fighting about?"

"You. Your mom said something at supper tonight, and your dad was, like, defending you."

"What did she say about me?"

"Basically, what she said this afternoon."

"You heard that?"

"I just got home from school when you two were fighting."

"Okay. Hey, I'll get out of your bed," Sara said. She stood and ended up grabbing the edge of the dresser to keep from falling.

"Are you okay?" Stephanie asked, rushing to her side.

"Yeah. Yeah, I just feel sick."

"Happened to my friend Becky when she was pregnant."

"Yeah. Yeah, but it hasn't been this bad."

"The bathroom's right there if you need it."

"Yeah. Yeah. I just realized, I didn't eat today."

"I'll get you something," Stephanie said as she helped Sara sit back down on the bed.

"Don't tell my parents what it's for."

"I won't." Stephanie smiled and left.

Sara stared at her hands. That was stupid, forgetting to eat all day. She needed to get to a doctor. There were vitamins and prenatal visits to think about. With those thoughts came the realization that she intended to have the baby.

"Thank you," Sara said, when Stephanie returned with a glass of ginger ale and a bag of pretzels.

"I know it's not much," she said, handing Sara the glass, "but there weren't any crackers, and you don't really want to risk much."

"You know a lot about pregnancy."

"No, I know a lot about being sick. I end up with a supposed stomach virus every few days, but I blame stress."

"Has that happened since you came here?"

"No, actually," Stephanie said, realizing for the first time.

"I'm glad you're here," Sara said. _I'm glad you're not there._

"Oh, you're welcome," the young girl said, thinking Sara was referring to her help that evening.

"Where are my parents?"

"Your father's in the living room. I have no idea where Aunt Joyce is."

"Okay." They sat looking at each other for a few moments. "I'm going to go talk to my dad." She grabbed a handful of pretzels and her glass. "Thank you so much, Stephanie. I'm so glad you're here."

"Good night!" Stephanie called into the hall.

"Good night," Sara said, managing a sincere smile. "Oh. Quit living out of your suitcase."

She slipped quietly down the stairs and into the living room.

"Sara," her father greeted her warmly with just her name.

"It's great to see you."

"Do I get a hug?"

"Yeah, of course." He pulled her into a tight hug, which was kind of awkward for her with the food in her hands.

"Sit down, talk to me," her father said, sitting back down in his chair.

"Okay." She sat her glass down on the table, careful to sit a coaster down first. "I'm having a baby."

"Is that what you decided?"

"Yes."

"The father?"

"We're friends."

"Friends?"

"Yeah."

"Do you sleep with all your friends?" a voice asked from behind her.

"That would be Mom," Sara said.

"Well?"

"No. No, I'm not a slut." Sara turned and looked at her mother. "Sorry, Mom, I know you'd like it if I could tell you that I've slept with every guy at the lab, but that just wouldn't be true, and I wouldn't want to lie to you. But I know how much you'd like it if I threw myself at your feet and confessed all the sins of my young life."

"We don't use that kind of language in this house, Sara. We also don't let supposedly good daughters sleep under our roof. So in the morning you can find yourself a hotel or go back to whoring yourself out in your city-of-the-year." Her mother walked out of the room.

"I'm leaving," Sara said, standing up.

"Sara, coming down here you could barely walk. Sit down."

"No, Dad, I don't need this! I could always handle her before because I had three months of the year away from her. Truth is, I hate her, but at least I love her. She plain hates me." She shook her head. "That made no sense."

"Do you want her to leave?"

"What?"

"I'll make her leave. No one abuses my daughter in my home, Sara. Please tell me she didn't treat you like this when you were living here."

"No, nothing like the last few hours. And it's not abuse, Dad."

"Yes, it is. Would you let the baby's father treat you like that?"

"No, he goes more for cold neglect."

They looked at each other for a moment before Sara burst into laughter.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine."

"Is he going to be a good father?"

Sara thought about Grissom's unconditional acceptance of Warrick. Then she thought about his treatment of Greg. "The potential's there. I'd like to think he'd be good with his own child, anyway."

"You have me worried now," her father half-joked.

"I'll ignore Mom."

"You were ignoring her really well when you almost passed out standing up."

"I'm fine."

"I'm happy to hear it, even if it's not true. I love you, Sara. Your mom does too, I'm sure."

"Did Mom ever tell you that I thought Stephanie's father killed Aunt Chloe.

"No, she never mentioned that. Why did you think that?"

"I still do. He all but told me, and I knew before that. That's why you have to make sure Mom doesn't send Stephanie back there," Sara said, starting to sound almost frantic.

"Okay, Sara. Calm down."

"Dad, I'm serious! I don't think he'd do anything to her, but she shouldn't have had to grow up there."

"Okay."

"Don't just humor me! I have never been this serious about anything."

"I'm not just humoring you. I trust you. Your mother will be out of this house before Stephanie is. Or you, for that matter."

"Okay. I'm going to sleep then. Is the guest room made up yet?"

"Yes, Stephanie and I did it."

"Thanks. I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, Sara. And, now that you know what you're doing, I'll tell you that I'm excited about being a grandfather."

"I'm glad." She smiled. "Good night."

"Good night, hon."

Sleep was not easy, but it came eventually.


	8. Chapter Eight

__

DISCLAIMER: Not mine, okay? Don't own the characters, don't own the show. I do, however, take full blame for the quality of this story.

I'm not even going to try to explain why it's been almost two months since chapter seven. Just accept my apologies, and let's move on with the story.

~*~*~*~*~

"I shouldn't be doing this," Sara said to Stephanie as she drove.

"But I'm glad you are. My dad would never take me." Stephanie stared out the window and clutched her purse in her lap.

"Are you sure you want to go?"  
  
"Sara, if you don't take me to see my mother's grave this week, it's hard to tell how many more years I'll have to wait. And I've waited my entire life."

"Okay."

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Sara said, "You were a beautiful baby."  
  
"That's what everyone says. I wouldn't know."

"What do you mean?"  
  
"I've never seen a picture of me as a baby. I've never even seen a photo album in my house, Sara."  
  
"What?" Sara asked, confused. "Your house was full of photo albums."

"It's not now."

"Okay. I have pictures. But they're not with me, they're at my apartment."

"Don't worry about it," Stephanie said. "Anyway, I really appreciate this."

"No problem. I've been wanting to come back for years myself."

Sara parked the car and she and Stephanie got out of the car. It was a warm day, almost too warm.

  
"Where are we headed?" Stephanie asked, looking around her.

  
"That general direction," Sara replied, pointing to their left.

As they followed the path deeper into the cemetery, Sara could feel herself slipping back into the mind of the young woman she had been the first time she was here. The confusion, the panic, the fear and regret and pain. She stopped and leaned her arm on a tree for support.  
  
"I can't do this, Steph. I'm sorry."  
  
"What's wrong? Are you sick?" Stephanie asked, stopping.

"No. I just...I don't have anything to...I don't want to go. If you need me to come with you I will, but if you can go by yourself I'd rather you did."

"We can go back to the car, Sara."  
  
"Never mind. I told you I'd bring you here. I'll be fine. Let's just keep going."  
  
"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, Stephanie."

A few minutes later Stephanie placed a bouquet on the otherwise bare grass in front of her mother's tombstone. When she turned around, she found Sara unconscious in the grass.

~*~*~*~*~

Greg locked his apartment door and checked his answering machine.

__

"Greg, hey," a light female voice said. _"This is Cynthia, hope you remember me."_ She laughed then. He loved her laugh. And he very much remembered her._ "Anyway, wanted to see if you'd like to meet me for dinner or at least more drinks Sunday night, since you said you had the night off. I really want to spend some time with you before I leave town again. Give me a call back, okay? Talk to you then."_

"Unbelievable," he said, grinning, as he reached for the phone. He started to dial Cynthia's phone number when he noticed the answering machine was still playing.

__

"...hate to bother you, but I don't have anyone else I can call. I need someone to drive me back to Vegas. I need out of here. Please call me back at 555-2747, Greg." He hit the talk button on the phone twice, then dialed the number Sara left on the machine.

"Hello, Sidle residence. Joyce speaking."

"Hello, ma'am. May I please speak to Sara?"  
  
"Just a moment."

"Hello?" he heard Sara ask more than say.

"Hi."  
  
"Greg."

__

"Greg?" he heard Sara's mother ask. This was followed by a slammed door.

"I'm back," she said. "I'm also apparently sixteen again," she added to herself.  
  
"I feel like that all the time," he offered in way of comfort.

She sighed and asked, "Can you come get me?"

"Yeah."  
  
"You don't have anything else to do tonight?"  
  
"What other plans would I have, Sara?"  
  
"Okay...I have to go," she said, and started to sob.

"Sara! Sara, what's wrong?" Greg asked frantically into the phone.

  
"I don't know. I passed out today, for no reason. I'm back here at my parents' house and my mother's calling me a whore and I'm so sick and weak and I'm worried about the baby and Grissom's in the hospital and they think I did it. I have had no time at all to process the information and I...I just want to go home."  
  
"Shh. Sara. Sara." He felt helpless. He wished he could comfort her. And what was this about a baby? "Give me directions and I'll be right there, I promise."

~*~*~*~*~

Sara hung the phone up and slowly opened the door she had slammed just minutes earlier.

"Honestly, Sara, do you feel better now that you got to act like a child and speak to your friend?" her mother asked.  
  
"No. But I feel better now that I'm going home."  
  
"I can't believe you're just leaving," Stephanie said angrily from the doorway.  
  
"I have to get back anyway. I have to take care of Grissom. I have to get to a doctor and make sure the baby's okay. I need to get somewhere that's a more positive environment, and even Las Vegas with an attempted murder charge hanging over my head beats this place."

"Go, then, Sara!" her mother screamed dramatically. "Leave now, when you have family obligations. Go have your bastard child. And don't ask me for anything." She left the room and disappeared somewhere in the house.

"I should never have asked you to take me," Stephanie said when a few moments had passed.

"This isn't because of going to the cemetery," Sara sighed.

"Things were fine the last few days until today."

"Things are never fine when she's around."  
  
"Was it hard growing up with her?"  
  
"Yes. I have no idea what she thought of me as a human being, but I know she hated me as her child. I was the _thing_ that ruined her life. She's unhappy. I feel sorry for her," Sara said. "I don't want to end up like her," she added, unconsciously touching her stomach. "I don't want to ever do to another person what she's done to me."  
  
"You'll be okay."

"Yeah, when I'm having my boss's baby out of wedlock in a state prison. It will all work out."

"You'd be surprised."  
  
"I hope so."

~*~*~*~*~

Greg pulled nervously into the driveway in front of what he hoped was Sara's parents' house. It was night already, but he'd wanted to get to her as soon as he could.

He noticed some movement in an upstairs window and a minute later Sara came outside followed by a girl who looked about fifteen. Both faces were tear-streaked, and he could not help but notice that the girl was going to be just as beautiful as Sara someday.

He got out of his car and walked around to take Sara's suitcase. He carried it over to the car and put it in the backseat, trying to give the two time to say goodbye. When the girl had gone back inside, he walked over to Sara.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, staring intently in her eyes.

"Yeah," she answered quietly.

He reached a hand up and cupped her chin, lifting her face up and making her look in his eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?"  
  
"I am now."

  
~*~*~*~*~

  
It was early morning when Sara walked down the hall toward Grissom's room. He might not even still be in the same room, she realized. She veered off her intended path and stopped at the nurses' station.

"Hi!" one of the familiar nurses greeted her. "Friend of Mr. Grissom, right?"  
  
"His niece," she answered.

"He's still in his room. Believe it or not, I think he's awake. Must be a family thing. Do you know it's not actually visiting hours?"  
  
"I know."  
  
"I'll see if he wants a visitor."

A few minutes later the nurse returned. "Go ahead in."  
  
"Thank you."

When Sara opened the door to Grissom's room, she was surprised by the picture presented to her. He only seemed slightly paler than he did prior to the accident. He had his glasses on and he pored over the contents of one of a pile of file folders on the table that hung over the bed.

"Sara," he said softly.

"Hello," she said. "You look like you're doing better."

"As long as I don't cough. They're moving me out of intensive care soon. Actually, they were going to two days ago, but something ruptured." He observed the look on her face, and added, "That sounds a lot worse than it was."  
  
"I hope so."

"That was a long sentence for me anymore," he tried to joke.  
  
"Grissom," she started, her voice breaking.

"Sara, what happened?"

"I had a lot of time to think, especially tonight. And I don't want you in my life anymore."  
  
"Sara, what --"

"I still want you in the baby's life, if that's what you want. But I can't take care of you, and I especially refuse to try to maintain a romantic relationship with you. I'm not a masochist, and I wouldn't expect anyone to try to make this work. I'm too emotional, you're too distant, and we'd be kidding ourselves to try anything. I'm sorry. I'll call you soon."

He watched in silent shock as she pulled the door shut behind her.

__

Distant would be welcome right now, he thought, as the tears started again for the first time in days.

~*~*~*~*~

__

It's still a Grissom/Sara story, I promise!

Sorry about the lateness and badness of this chapter. There's just been...stuff...going on over here.

Please leave a review, even if you think this most recent installment is lame. I need to figure out what went so horrible wrong with this chapter, because it just does not love me the way the other chapters have. Any ideas for the rest of the story, feel free to share them too. The writers' block has me desperate.  
  
No, that's just the stress and sleep deprivation.

~Amber, March 31, 2002; 5:15 a.m.


	9. Chapter Nine

Disclaimer: _I **still** don't own them. You'd think after how much I've abused them while they were out on loan CBS would make me pay for them, but no, they insist on holding onto their property. Oh well._

My brother's being mean. He just sent me this quote because he knows I'm working on this story. "Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards." Robert Heinlein. It's actually funny, though. 

~*~*~*~*~

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."

~M. Cartmill

~*~*~*~*~

"Mr. Grissom?" A light knock at the doorframe the next morning. He looked up and saw a nicely dressed woman at the door. "Are you busy?" she asked, indicating the folders he was going through.

"Nothing that can't wait."

She smiled, a fake just-to-be-appropriate smile, very similar to one that Catherine used a lot if they were working on an investigation. "Is there anything you'd like to discuss?"

"When I'll be leaving and what my care will entail."

She sat beside his bed. "Mr. Grissom, you'll need to discuss that with your doctors. I meant if you'd --"

"You're not a doctor?"  
  
"I am a doctor."  
  
"I don't really have anything to discuss."

"How's your niece?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"One of your nurses noticed some...agitation...after her last visit and brought it to the attention of your doctors."

"So that she wouldn't be allowed back?"

"If that was necessary. They opted to refer the matter to me."  
  
"There is no matter."

"Well, something happened during her last visit."

This was just too surreal. "It was a family issue."  
  
"Well, any stress that might compromise your care needs to be addressed, Mr. Grissom."  
  
"It's done now."

"I need to know what was going on."  
  
"I won't show any more signs of agitation. Scout's honor."

She glared at his sarcasm. "I'm doing my job, Mr. Grissom."  
  
"Me too," he said, and deliberately turned his attention back the folders he was going through.

"If after speaking to your doctors they want me to come back, I will."

"I'll still be here," he said without looking up.

She started to leave, then turned around. "How does it make you feel when someone refuses to help you with an investigation."  
  
"It would bother me, unless I was claiming to investigate their movie collection or something else that was not at all my business."

"I hope I see you again," she said, and left.

"She hardly seemed like she was behaving professionally," Warrick said as he came in the open door. "Feel like a visitor?"  
  
Grissom would have rather Warrick left, but he nodded and closed the folders.

"How are you feeling?" Warrick asked.

"Fine."

"Hear from Sara?"  
  
"She came back last night."

"I'll have to call her. We haven't really had a chance to talk. How is she?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"You don't know?"

"Can you really tell how she's feeling on any given day?"

"Yes. Do you even know she's _there _on any given day?"

"What the hell, Warrick?" Grissom closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillow. He had not gone to sleep that night, and something about crying more than he was sleeping, with the added pressure of fluorescent lighting, really was hurting his eyes.

"Nothing. Are you okay?"  
  
"Not really," he replied honestly.

"Should I call --"  
  
"It's not physical."

"Oh," Warrick said. "Should I call Catherine?"

  
Grissom opened his eyes. "What?"  
  
"I don't know," Warrick admitted. "I just thought it."

"I'm going to sleep."

"Okay. Feel better, Grissom."

Grissom nodded and waited for Warrick to leave. He put on a television show about laying hardwood flooring that for some reason had found its home on his beloved Learning Channel, and eventually slept.

  
~*~*~*~*~

Sara walked into the lobby of the lab and nervously removed her sunglasses.

"Miss Sidle," the receptionist said. You're not allowed --"

"I told her to come," Ecklie said, appearing behind her. "We have to talk." The receptionist nodded and returned to the computer screen.

"Okay," Sara said, wondering why Ecklie filled her with such dread. Maybe because he held her future in the palm of his hand and made no secret of it. She followed him back to his office.

"Welcome back," he said, smiling without any apparent change in his eyes.

"What?"  
  
"There's no evidence linking you to Grissom's attack. Except your role as the jilted lover." Amazing. His eyes still had not changed, but she could see the immense enjoyment he was taking in his personal knowledge of her.

"I don't know what you want," she said quietly in the silence that followed.

"Nothing."

"Then why not just tell me I was reinstated on my answering machine?"  
  
"There's some paperwork." He reached into his briefcase and continued talking. "Really, you should still be suspended. Just because you were cleared in the attack doesn't mean you can't be held accountable for leaving Grissom at the crime scene."  
  
"I'm done feeling guilty for that," she said, refusing to play into his mind games.

He closed the briefcase without taking out her forms. "Sara, one letter from me and you won't be working at any lab in this country. I'll see that every reference that comes to Grissom's desk goes to mine instead. And if you think that a recommendation from the second-best lab in the country won't hurt you, you're wrong."

She stared at him in disbelief as he signed her papers and handed her the top one without making eye contact again.

She barely made it through the office door before starting to sob, but the last thing she was doing was giving Conrad Ecklie the pleasure of seeing that he had made her cry.

~*~*~*~*~

"Sara?" Nick asked with a mixture of nervousness and pleasure when he found her in the locker room that evening.

"Nick! I'm back!" she exclaimed, not realizing how happy this made her until she finally had someone to share it with.

"Congratulations," he said, sitting on the bench beside her and pulling her to his chest for a tight hug. She laughed. "When'd you get home?" he asked when he released her.  
  
"This morning."

"You look great."

"For a former attempted murder suspect?" she asked. "Or do I just normally look bad?"

He looked confused. "I meant that you don't look as washed out as most women do at this point in a pregnancy."  
  
"What?" Her face went white, half with shock and half with anger.

"Now you do," he tried to joke.

"Who told you? Catherine? Or was it him?" Her foot was tapping loudly on the tile floor and in the empty locker room it seemed to echo.

"Catherine. Sara, I'm sorry. I didn't meant to upset you."

"I don't care." She stood up and started to pace. "I really was planning on telling you and Warrick today. I just can't believe that she took it upon herself to tell you," Sara trailed off.

"Don't get too mad at Cath. I asked about you because I've been worried. How far along?"  
  
"Nine weeks now," she said, sitting next to him and starting to calm down.

"Hey, you've got yourself evident fingerprints already. That has to appeal to your sense of humor."

She smiled. "Yeah, that does. And it scares me that you know that."  
  
He shrugged and smiled. "I'm really excited for you. Who's the father?"

  
Her smile disappeared again. "Three things you never ask a woman, Nick: age, weight, and the father of her unborn child."  
  
"I'm sorry. I'm really messing up tonight." He got up to leave.

"Hey," she said, standing up with him. She made the split-second decision to forget about it. "Nick, we don't look washed out, okay? We glow."  
  
"Of course. Nausea always makes me glow."  
  
She punched him playfully in the arm and followed him to the break room where Catherine was already waiting to hand out the night's assignments.

It felt wonderful to be back.

~*~*~*~*~

Author's notes: _Short chapter, I know. But I wanted to write more, and I'm limited on time. Thank you for your beautiful words over the last two days. And I'll try to avoid six-week breaks in the future._

Also, let's all mentally thank my evil AP American history teacher who provided Ecklie's speech the day he threatened to prevent one of the students in my class from ever setting foot on a college campus. "Thank you, Mr. Lowe!"

  
Also, there is a fanfic writer on this site, pen name Forensiphile, who talked to me while I wrote half of this tonight. So a special thank you there. As well as Holly, who emailed me with a push in the right direction. Sorry if I'm forgetting anyone, my old mail was cleared. Not only could I not do this without help, but I wouldn't bother without the feedback. So a huge thank you to **everybody**. Good night.

~Amber, April 2, 2002, 12:50 a.m.

Look at the time. Lowe will not be pleased.


	10. Chapter Ten

Disclaimer: _Not mine, okay? Not the characters, not the whatever, not any of it. Ooh, but this disclaimer's mine! Yay!_

: 

Author's note(s): _We're skipping some time here in the story. Creative decision, or so-called. Also, I re-read the early chapters of this story tonight. And there is no continuity! I can not wait to revise this as one giant package so that it can actually make sense. _

And we get a nice corny fortune cookie scene today!

: 

Grissom looked in the small mirror above the sink in his room. It was three weeks to the night that Sara arrived back into town and disappeared back out of his life. Catherine had brought him clothes, dark gray slacks and a green shirt, and after putting them on and shaving, he felt almost like himself. Except that he had a child arriving in six months whose mother would not return his phone calls.

He checked his watch again, the most beautiful item in the world to him after four weeks without it. It was already seven in the evening. He was becoming impatient, anxious to be home again. He could not leave until each doctor who had been consulted on his case signed off, and there was one left.

He had been pleasantly surprised and very relieved when he was told that he was only going to need minimal care. He knew he did not really have anyone who he wanted taking care of him. The sooner he could sleep with his townhouse otherwise unoccupied the better. He was upset that he was even expected to have someone staying with him. Except for a tightness in his chest sometimes he felt fine, and there was no one he wanted to see. Pretty much no one.

"Ready to go home?" Catherine asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway. "Or would you rather stand there and try to look smart?"

"I don't have to try," he replied automatically, not really registering what she was saying. He grabbed his overnight bag from the bed and she rushed over to take it from him. "It's empty, Catherine, take it easy," he said, his bloodshot eyes flashing with anger.

"I'm just worried," she said defensively, taking a few steps back.

"I'm fine. Are those my discharge papers?" he asked. She held them out to him silently, and he read over them. "There's no reason for you to stay at my place tonight. There's nothing here that I need help with."

"You're supposed to have someone with you in case. And it's not going to be me anyway, I have to work tonight. It's going to be Sara." She paused for a moment. "That should cheer you up, since she's the only person you have any interest in seeing anymore."

"What?"

"Nothing, Grissom. But you should know that Nick and Warrick noticed it too. That you could care less who comes through that door to be with you once you realize that it's not her."

"Maybe I don't really want to see anyone, Catherine. Including Sara. I never really saw anyone before this happened. Why would I want to spend hours a day with everyone now?" He knew he was being awful, but he did not care. Anything to make her quit talking about Sara.

She stared at him, hurt apparent in her eyes. "Ready?"

He avoided looking her in the eyes. He did hated how he was treating her. "Yes," he said simply, leaving the room for the last time.

Sara nervously rang Grissom's doorbell and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Hey," Catherine said, opening the door. "I have to go. He's asleep in his room now, but he ordered supper and it's on its way. I have no idea what it is. There's money on the counter."

"I can pay for it," Sara told her, sitting down her black bag.

"Okay. I really have to run. Try to have a good night."

"You too."

Sara watched Catherine pull out of the driveway then carefully closed the door. She wanted to go to Grissom's room, make sure he was breathing. Wanted to see him. She had not gone this long without seeing him since she left San Francisco for Las Vegas.

She now noticed a box of Grissom's belongings that had been returned by the lab sitting next to the door. In other words, things that had lost Ecklie's interest in the last four weeks. She began putting everything back where it belonged in the obviously empty spots on shelves. At the bottom of the box was a brown leather-bound blank book. Not exactly blank. Grissom's journal.

She dropped it on the couch and stared at it. She respected him too much to read it. She wanted to know what it said about her. If she only looked at the part about that night, she would not be finding out anything she did not already know.

"No, I can't do this," she said out loud, picking the journal up and putting it on the small table in the corner.

"Why not?" a voice asked.

She turned toward the voice. "Grissom! I'm glad to see you looking so good."

"I'm glad to be seeing you at all," he replied. He nodded toward the book. "Read it. You won't get anything out of it anyway."

"I don't want to."

"I want you to."

"I don't have to do something just because you ask me to."

"Okay," he said, seeming strangely amused. The doorbell rang, and he moved to get it, leaving Sara staring at the cover of the book in front of her. "Thank you," he said to the deliveryman, before closing the door and taking the food into the kitchen.

She picked it up and opened to the first page. It seemed that the journal actually started out as a list of quotes, each dated, the first from 1989. She identified with it too much, and it did not surprise her that Grissom did too.

"That's life: trust and you're betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself."

Three years of unmarked quotes filled the beginning of the journal. Eventually he started to write comments after each one, explaining why they caught his attention. It all seemed normal to her until she found one dated for the spring of 1993.

"Excitement leaped in my breast like a puppy, enthusiastic and more than a little naive." Exactly what I'm thinking now. Somehow always knows what I'm thinking. Just a coincidence to find this quote tonight. Feels weird, this automatic attraction. Sara Sidle. Remember that name. Smart, attentive, only college student I met so far who seems qualified to have graduated high school. Would write more, but there are days to go yet at this awful conference. Maybe not awful, now.

"Do you want to eat?" he asked from the kitchen.

"Yeah," she said, her voice shaky. She walked over to the counter where a plate of vegetable stir fry waited for her.

"I hope it's okay. You weren't here to order."

"No. It's fine." She took the fork he handed her and started to eat.

"Like the journal?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Didn't get there yet. I'm still back when you first met me. Can't decide what I think."

"I have no idea what I wrote about that."

Sara shrugged. "You seem like you're doing really well already. Surprised you still want someone staying here," she observed as he stood at the table going through mail.

"You don't have to stay."

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, I know you said you didn't want to take care of me."

She sighed and sat her fork down. "Grissom, It's not that I...Never mind."

He stood looking at her for a minute. "I'm going to try to go back to sleep. I put out a towel and some things for you in the bathroom if you want to take a shower tonight."

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Good night, Sara." She watched him walk away and listened for the sound of his bedroom door closing. It sounded comforting.

Sara wrapped the huge towel around her shoulders and settled herself on Grissom's brown leather couch. In some ways she felt incredible. She noticed in the shower that she was showing, just enough for her to notice. She also wished that she and Grissom were in a place in their relationship where they could share that.

She opened his journal, which disturbingly enough matched the couch. He wrote like he was taking notes, almost. He wrote the way she would expect.

Finally, her curiosity got the better of her, and she turned to almost three months before.

Don't have a quote for what I did last night. Or. Yes. "Occasionally, there arises a ... situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous, or brilliant – you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that idea in the first place. Trust your demon." Trusted mine last night. Can't think, decide, for myself. Let Sara make up our collective mind on this. Far as this is concerned, would follow her to the ends of the earth. Have no idea what to do, have to trust someone. Rather Sara than someone else. Who else? All Sara. Being scientific, trying to rationalize this. Well, here's the truth. I have no idea. Not the first woman I've wanted, I'm forty-seven. The ONLY one I want now. Absolutely. Don't know why I did what I did last night. Don't want to lose her. No where to go from here. Exactly what I wanted, wrong circumstances. Didn't want a one-night stand, not with Sara. Don't want this, can't do more. Don't know if I love her, have no idea what that means. "The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom, and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either." Can memorize that but can't deal with the aftermath of a bad decision. I don't want to shrink this down to a bad decision. It was stupid and I hope she's not feeling hurt and it's done now. Know I don't need this. Feel like I need her.

Sara was moved by his words, awkward as they were, even though they were not at all what she wanted to read. She knew Grissom, though, as much as anyone did, and she knew that there was so much in the words she had just read.

She stood up and shook her head to try to clear it.

She realized she wanted something sweet. She did not trust anything coming from Grissom's kitchen, but she wandered around in it anyway. She noticed the fortune cookies sitting in their wrappers next to the empty Chinese food containers. She opened one and broke it apart carefully. Once she finished the cookie she idly read the paper that was inside.

"Others trust you to lead; follow their example."

Something startled Grissom awake. He looked panicked at his now open bedroom door, but was calmed he saw her looking at him. She closed the door, then he could feel rather than see her get under the sheet on the other side of the bed.

"Are you awake?" she asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Can I sleep in here?"

"Yes."

She moved closer to him, until they were touching. He loved feeling her pregnant stomach through the cotton pajamas she was wearing. He could tell. He knew every inch of her. And the choice of sleepwear was so like Sara. She rested her head against his chest, seeming to relax. Finally she asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"If I promise to try will you try too?"

He was suddenly awake. "Even my best isn't going to --"

"Will you try?"

"Of course."

"That's all I need tonight." She carefully wrapped her arms around him.

Her breathing fell into a regular pattern and her breath warmed his chest where her mouth rested. He tried not to cry, but eventually he did. She woke slowly.

"Am I hurting you?" she asked when she noticed his tears.

"No." He gently stroked her hair.

She curled her fingers around his and lightly kissed his fingertips. "Good night."

"Good night."

Author's notes: _Okay, credits: Every quote in Grissom's journal is by Roger Zelazny, the best author of all time. The fortune cookie was by my mom. ("Hey, how do you say 'trust people who trust you' in fortune cookie language?" "Your English assignments keep getting weirder, Amber.") _

: 

_And this is **not** the end of the story. For anyone who was worried. If anyone was. No one was? Okay then! _

Love you guys,

Amber

April 3, 2002; 9:19 p.m.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Disclaimer: _Not mine. No money for me. Just for fun, mine and hopefully other people's too. And this story has rid me of my fear of chemistry labs! Not sure how, not sure why that's in the disclaimer, but I swear it worked. So a major "yay" there for me! Also, since author's notes are going in the disclaimer today, just wanted to thank Richard O'Brien, without whom this story would not be possible. I need this music to get through most the chapters. Thought I'd share that. _

Everybody thank my mom for not bitching me out all the times I was up till one in the morning and for bringing me supper tonight. She's as instrumental as Richard O'Brien in the production of this story.

When Sara woke up the next morning, she was not sure where she was. She put her arms over her eyes to block out the little bit of light that was coming in the room and tried to think.

"Good morning," said a too-awake voice from beside her.

"Morning, Gris," she managed before turning onto her stomach and burying her face in the pillow. "How are you feeling?" she asked the pillowcase.

"Good, considering." Grissom sat down the book he was reading and turned to look at her. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Of course. Feels like a truck ran over me, though."

He rubbed her shoulder through the sheet that was now pulled over her head. "Little one giving you problems?"

"Don't blame this on them," she said, laughing a little.

He smiled. "You're still asleep."

"More or less."

"I thought so."

The phone rang and Grissom got up to answer it, leaving Sara alone in the bed with her eyes closed. It was a nice morning, a nice way to wake up, but she had no idea where they were going from there.

Grissom reappeared in the bedroom doorway and she pulled the sheet off her face to look at him. He was holding the phone and looked annoyed. "Nick wants to know what you want for breakfast."

She sat up, a similar look appearing on her face. "Tell him that whatever is fine. And that I appreciate the thinly veiled wakeup call."

"He said that you're welcome."

She nodded and walked past him into the living room where her bag was still sitting. "Okay, Nick. In a few. Thank you," she heard him say before hanging up the phone. "I'm sorry about this," he told her.

"I don't care. Is he going to have everybody with him?"

"Catherine and Warrick, yeah. That's the impression I got."

She stared into the bag and sighed. "We're not going to just be okay."

"I know," he said quietly.

She asked the question that had bothered her throughout the night. "Are we even in a relationship, Grissom?"

"I meant it when I said I didn't want anyone but you, but it takes both of us to answer your question, Sara." His blue eyes watched intently, waiting for her response. When the doorbell rang she broke his gaze and stood up with her bag, retreating to the bathroom.

Who decided that I should be allowed to speak? he asked himself as he pulled the door open, thankful that he never changed out of his clothes to go to sleep.

"Good morning," Catherine said handing him a huge bouquet of flowers and then walking into the kitchen, pulling plates from the overhead cabinets.

"We told her no on the flowers, but...Well, you know Catherine better than us." Nick smiled at him.

"Move, Nick!" an agitated Warrick yelled as he attempted to balance half a dozen precariously stacked styrofoam containers

"Sorry," Nick said, moving out of the way then following Warrick into the kitchen.

"Where's Sara?" Catherine asked when Grissom joined them.

"Getting dressed. How was your night?"

The kitchen suddenly quieted. "There are some bad people out there," Catherine finally said, her voice thick.

"One of those nights that makes you want to leave," Warrick added.

"What was the case?" Grissom asked softly.

"Guy killed his pregnant wife and three children," Nick told him, trying to keep his voice blank.

"I'm glad Sara wasn't working last night," Grissom said, without adding that he was thankful to have avoided the case as well.

"On that note..." Catherine trailed off, arranging the food on the counter and turning to face the men.

"Let's eat," Warrick said, trying to shift everyone's focus from the case.

"Yeah," Nick said. "I'll go get Sara."

He left the kitchen and walked down the hall to the bathroom. "Sara?" he called, knocking lightly on the door.

"What?" she asked, her voice tired.

"Are you okay? Can I come in?"

"Yeah, I guess."

He opened the door in time to see her wipe a wet washcloth over her face. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked.

"I can't talk about it, Nick."

"Sara."

"Nick. Really. I'd be betraying someone else's confidence to talk to you about this."

"Whose?" he asked, closing the door softly.

"The baby's father."

"Well, I don't know him. Why don't you talk to me?"

She looked at him, and gauged the offer as sincere. "The baby's father wants to be with me, and I know it will never work out."

"How do you know?"

"Most relationships don't last twenty years. Why would this be any different?

"Because Grissom loves you."

She looked up in shock. "What are you talking about? Where the hell did that come from?"

"It's pretty obvious, Sara. Am I right?"

"You're right about Grissom being the baby's father, at least."

"And what am I wrong about?" he asked curiously.

"Him loving me," she said as she zipped her bag closed. "I'm not even sure I love him."

"You do. If you didn't, you wouldn't have been crying."

"I think I have things to cry about beyond this."

He nodded, acknowledging the truth in her statement. "So, was this like a recurring thing?"

His question broke the tension in the room, and she laughed. "Wow, Nick, I'm not discussing my sex life with you," she whispered. "And I am definitely not discussing Grissom's."

He smiled, pleased to see her acting more normal. "This is too good."

"Keep your mouth shut," she told him as she brushed past him into the hall.

"I will," he promised, following her with a smile on his face.

"About time," Warrick said as they walked into the kitchen. "Good morning, Sara."

"Morning, Warrick," she said, regarding most of the food with disgust before selecting a bagel and sitting down next to Grissom.

"Did you tell him?" Nick asked Warrick as he fixed his plate.

"No. Thought I'd let you."

"What?" Grissom asked suspiciously.

"We're all going out together tonight before work, and we wanted to invite you."

"I'd rather stay here."

"Come on, Grissom," Nick pleaded. Sara hid her laughter behind her bagel. Grissom sat beside her, regarding Nick with a wary look.

"Don't you want to get out for a little while?" Nick continued.

"Everything I need is right here," Grissom said, glancing at Sara. Nick noticed, but Warrick and Catherine interpreted the comment as Grissom's stubborn resolve not to go out.

"You should go, Gris," Sara spoke up.

"See, Grissom, Sara's coming," Nick said.

"No, Sara's not," she said, still smiling. Sitting this close to Grissom, she realized that she felt an almost overwhelming impulse to just lean her head on his shoulder, like it was a normal brunch with their friends on a normal morning.

"Forget it," Nick said, looking hurt. "It was just an idea."

They ate in silence, then Grissom surprised everyone by saying, "I'll go if Sara goes."

Nick looked up at Sara, hoping she would just go along with it.

"Okay," she said, deciding that a couple hours with the few friends she had in Las Vegas would probably do her a lot of good.

"Nick," Sara said once they reached their table that evening, "this is almost the trashiest place I've ever been. And I know it's the trashiest since college."

They had driven forty minutes outside of the city to a single building that might have once housed a family restaurant. Now it was only two dozen tables, a dance floor, and a stage, but it was completely full.

"No, it's a well-kept secret," Nick told her. "I love it here."

"Come dance with me, Warrick," Catherine said as soon as her purse was sitting on her chair.

"I don't dance with people who are better than me," he said, shaking his head.

"Come on, Warrick. I want to tell you something anyway."

"Fine," he grunted, letting her pull him to the corner of the room where many other couples were already dancing.

"There are worse places, I admit," Sara said, sitting down and trying to ignore Grissom's presence just inches from her..

"The point isn't the restaurant," Nick said patiently.

"Yet here we are," Grissom commented.

Nick looked angry, but at that moment a pretty waitress walked up behind him and put her arms around his neck. "Guess who, Nicky," she said into his ear.

"Julie!" He turned around and stared at her. "It's been way too long, Jules."

"I know. No rest for the weary," she said, smiling almost shyly at him. "Are you guys ready to order?"

"My usual," Nick said, still unable to take his eyes off of her.

"And your friends?"

He turned to look at Grissom and Sara. "Order for me," Grissom said, pulling Sara to her feet.

"What are you doing?" Sara asked him.

"I want to dance too," he told her. "It's slow enough for me," he added, misinterpreting the uncertainty in her glance.

"What do you want?" Nick called after her as Grissom led her away from the table.

"Whatever's fine," she yelled over her shoulder.

A few moments later she felt his arms around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder as he led their dance.

"Wonder what the story is with Nick and that woman," she mumbled into his neck as her fingers locked at the back of his neck.

"I don't know. I wanted to give them a few minutes alone, though."

"I thought you just wanted to dance. Hmm. Doesn't matter." She sighed, feeling the pain in her head calm a little. "I like this song." She sang quietly, for her benefit more than his. "'I know I could have saved a love that night, if Id known what to say. Instead of making love, we both made our separate ways. And now --'"

"Sara."

"What?" she asked, startled.

"You have a beautiful voice."

She breathed deeply with her face in his collar. He was wearing a dark blue polo shirt and the cotton felt great against her skin. "Thank you," she said, her lips brushing his neck as she spoke.

They danced wordlessly for a few more moments, and when the song ended they silently returned to the table where Catherine and Warrick had already rejoined Nick.

"Look at Nick," Warrick said to Sara.

"What about him?" Sara asked.

"He's love struck," Warrick continued.

"I barely know her, Warrick," Nick said defensively.

"You don't need to."

"Drop it, Warrick!" Nick said, suddenly angry.

Julie chose that moment to reappear with their food. "Any of you singing tonight?" she asked as she sat their food and drinks down.

"Singing?" Catherine asked.

"Kind of like a karaoke thing, except the band does the music. They have a whole list up there, you can check it out."

Catherine laughed. "Not my thing, but thank you."

"That's okay. We get some amazing voices in here. Have a nice meal," she said as she walked away, the tray down at her side.

Sara looked at her plate. "I can't eat," she said, pushing the plate away. "Sorry, Nick."

"That's fine, Sara. Are you all right?"

She stood up. "Yeah."

"Where are you going?" Grissom asked.

"To sing."

Nick's eyes lit up. "Go for it."

She smiled. "I am."

It was only a matter of minutes before Sara found herself on the small stage. _It's only a handful of people_, she told herself. _Take it easy_.

She heard the music she had selected start behind her, and when the time came she sang.

"'Love, I get so lost, sometimes. Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart. When I want to run away, I drive off in my car, but whichever way I go I come back to the place that you are.'"

The silence was deafening. She did not realize anyone would actually listen.

"'All my instincts, they return, and the grand facade, so soon will burn. Without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside.'" She wanted to meet Grissom's eyes, but instead she closed her own and clutched the microphone stand until her knuckles turned white.

"'In your eyes, the light, the heat. In your eyes, I am complete. In your eyes, I see the doorway to a thousand churches. In your eyes, the resolution of all the fruitless searches.'" Her voice faltered on the last line, but she kept going. "'In your eyes, I see the light and the heat. In your eyes, oh, I want to be that complete. I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes.'"

She thought about everything she had seen and experienced. About the effect everything had on her. "'Love, I don't like to see so much pain, so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away. I get so tired of working so hard for our survival.'" She opened her eyes and looked at the table full of her friends before she sang the next line. "'I look to these times with you to keep me awake and alive.'"

She closed her eyes again, hoping that they knew how much they meant to her. She did not know how to tell them. She was barely aware as she sang the rest of the song, and she could feel too many eyes on her. No one else was talking.

The last chord of the song faded away, and she opened her eyes. She had the world, and she had no idea what to do with it.

"You're being stupid, Grissom," Nick said much later that night, sitting in Grissom's living room.

"What?" Grissom asked, looking up from the book he was reading.

"You are! I wasn't going to say anything, because it's not any of my business, but --"

"Then don't say anything."

"I have to. If I had half the chances with Julie that you've had with Sara, that you have with her now, I wouldn't be sitting here tonight. I'd be in bed next to her."

"It's not that that simple, Nick," Grissom said, turning back to the book.

"Why not?"

"Because she doesn't want to be with me, Nick!" Grissom yelled, throwing the book across the room where it crashed into the wall.

"She thinks the same thing about you, Grissom. But, judging from your reaction just now, I'm going to say she's wrong."

Grissom stared past Nick at the crumpled book on the floor. "Yeah, she's wrong."

Author's notes: _"Every Rose Has A Thorn", Poison; "In Your Eyes", Peter Gabriel. _

Amber, April 8, 2002, 9:50 p.m.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Disclaimer: _ Property of people with a lot more money and much nicer stereos than me. I'm just borrowing the characters because no one reads original stories and fanfic's more enjoyable anyway._

Author's notes: _This is the chapter where Nick Stokes gets fed through a wood chipper by the disgruntled writer ... No, I'm kidding. He's not even in this chapter._

~*~*~*~*~

****

Give Me A Chance

__

Chapter 12

~*~*~*~*~

"You should have knocked," Grissom said, opening the sliding glass door that led to the supposed patio attached to the back of his house.

"I didn't want to wake you," she replied from her seat on the cement slab, watching the sky grow lighter. "It's only six."

"I don't sleep much."

  
"Neither do I," she said, pulling her hair down over her face. It was already too bright for her headache.

"How long have you been out here?" he asked her slouched form.

"Since Nick drove off with your spare key while I was still outside."

He smiled. "Why were you here so early?"

"Catherine told me to go home."  
  
"Why didn't you?"

"I don't know," she answered simply. "Wanted to come here instead."

He looked at her but she did not turn around.  
  
Finally she stood. "It's going to rain," she said, frowning. She went inside and he followed her, locking the door behind them.

  
They stood close together without speaking for what felt like days. Finally Sara broke the silence. "Did _Applications of Entomology in Forensic Science_ make you angry last night?" she asked taking a step back and looking at the book on the floor. He did not answer, and she continued nervously, "Surprised you need to read that."  
  
"I don't need to," he said. "I actually consulted on it."

"Oh. Impressive."

"No, not really."

  
She sat down on the arm of the couch behind her. "Last night was nice," she offered quietly.

"It did feel normal," he agreed.

"Yeah."  
  
He sighed. "I like having order in my life, Sara," he began.

"I know."  
  
"It doesn't have to be simple, but I need to at least know what's happening."

"Okay, Grissom." She stood slowly and kissed his lips for the first time in three months. In his stunned silence that followed she said in a rush, "Then you're in luck. It is simple. I want to be with you. I want to raise our child and buy each other gifts and kiss and hold hands and watch forensics documentaries." She looked at the floor, suddenly scared of what his reaction would be. "And in a few months," she continued, "I want us to ride roller coasters together. I want to figure out what will make you happy, Gris, then I want to make that happen for you."

  
"Why?" he managed to ask, hoping she did not notice how much he was shaking.

  
"Because that's what love is." She held her breath, waiting for his reaction.

"Then that's what I want to do for you, too." He gently lifted her face back up to meet his eyes.

There was a lot unspoken between them, and Sara decided it was best to leave it that way for a little while. "Want to feign normalcy again?"

"What do you have in mind?" he asked, his mind still reeling from the conversation. He wondered how she managed to switch gears so quickly.

She smiled. "I want to go look at baby stuff."

"We can do that."

"Hey. You look disappointed."  
  
"No." He shook his head. "When do you want to leave?"  
  
"Soon."  
  
"I'm going to get a shower first."  
  
"Go ahead," she said. "I'm going to raid your kitchen, if that's okay."

"Good luck," he told her before he disappeared down the hall.

She picked up his book and carried it into the kitchen where she sat it on the counter. Grissom was really willing to try, she realized. She suddenly felt guilty for a lot of what she had thought and said while visiting her parents. She knew now that no one could be the partner to her and father to their child that Grissom would be. _And, to be honest_, she told herself,_ I don't want anyone else._

~*~*~*~*~

Grissom watched Sara as she walked slightly ahead of him in between two racks of large stuffed animals. She seemed genuinely content, and he was happy to see that expression on her face.

"Come here," she said, reaching behind her for his hand and pulling him toward her. "We have to buy this."

"Which one?" he asked. All he could see was a tall wall of too-bright fabric.

She handed him a vividly colored fleece bug. "Your child has to have this," she said, smiling.

He looked at it, then nodded. "It's nice. We can buy it."

"You really don't care, do you?" she asked, looking disappointed.

He had no idea what to say to her. His cell phone rang, and he gratefully turned away to take the call. "Grissom," he said, feeling Sara's eyes burning into his back.

"Hey, it's Catherine. We got him."

"Who?"

"Your guy. Ecklie's talking to him right now...Are you there?"  
  
"I'm here."  
  
"Are you coming in?"  
  
"No. I don't want to see him."  
  
"See who?" Sara asked.

Grissom turned to face her. "They -- They found him."  
  
Sara knew immediately who he was referring to. "Are you okay?" she asked him quietly.

"Is that Sara? Where are you two?" Catherine asked into his ear.  
  
He shook his head in response to Sara's question and told Catherine, "We're shopping."

"Shopping?" Catherine asked suspiciously.  
  
He noticed that his free hand was shaking. Sara wrapped her fingers softly around his wrist. "Yes, shopping."

"Are you sure you don't want to come in? They won't let you talk to him, but you can at least see him," Catherine said.  
  
"I don't even want to see him."

"I do," Sara told him quietly.

"Why?" Catherine asked him at the same time he asked Sara.

"I don't know why I would, Catherine," he said. "Goodbye." He hung up the phone and directed his attention to Sara. "Why do you want to see him?"  
  
"I want to see who did this to you."

  
"Did what?" He shook his wrist free from her hand "I'm fine, Sara. I wasn't even hurt as badly as we thought. I'll be back at work soon. It's over."  
  
"Well, I'm glad you've managed to convince yourself that you're fine, Grissom, but I know that _I'm_ not. I still have dreams about finding you that night. I can't stop thinking about you lying there..." She trailed off. "I'm angry. I need to know who I'm angry at. If you don't want to come, I can't make you."

"Do you want me with you?"  
  
_Always_, she thought. "Yes."

He nodded and took a deep breath. "Let's go."

~*~*~*~*~

Sara stood clenching her fists, staring. Catherine, who was standing behind her, wondered idly if Sara was going to lunge at the two-way mirror.

Grissom stared in shock rather than anger. Everything that had happened in the last few weeks was because of this one person. The person just was not who he was expecting.

"How old is he?" Sara asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

"Eighteen," Catherine told her.

"Good. That's all we need. This guy's not getting off on a technicality."

"What do you want me to say?" Sara jumped as the young man spoke for the first time since their arrival.

"It doesn't matter what you say. We know you did it," Ecklie told him. "Things aren't going to go well for you from here."  
  
The man laughed. "It's not like he was a cop. He didn't even die. There's not going to be any public outrage."

Sara turned to Grissom. "He doesn't care about what he did at all. He doesn't care that he almost killed you. He doesn't care about your friends or ch--"

"Sara," Grissom said quietly.

"Your 'ch'?" Catherine asked.

"Never mind," Grissom said.

Catherine laughed, realization dawning on her face. "Oh, I must have missed this. I am genuinely surprised. See, I thought it was Warrick."

"Warrick?" Grissom asked. "Why would you think that?"

"Because they were fighting," Catherine explained.

"Catherine." Sara sounded annoyed. "This is none of your business."

"Calm down, Sara," Catherine said, still amused. "I think it's great that you two are having a baby."

"Yes, congratulations," Ecklie said from the doorway. "When can we be expecting the new arrival?"  
  
Sara just stared back at him. It was better not to say anything. He did not really want an answer, she knew, he just wanted to trap her.

"About six months," Grissom answered honestly.

Ecklie looked at the three other people in the room. His face suddenly changed. "We'll figure something out."

  
"What?" Sara asked, surprised.

"I'm not breaking up a family," Ecklie said simply. His eyes seemed weird, but he did not explain his sudden generosity. "Rules were made to be broken." He left with three shocked faces watching him.

"He would know," Catherine said.

"Are you ready to leave?" Grissom asked Sara.

"Yeah," she answered quietly.

The walk back to the parking lot was uncomfortable for Grissom. Everyone they passed seemed to know who he was and what had happened. It had only been four weeks since one of their own had been attacked, and they were very aware of it.

"So much for being unknown," Sara said softly once they reached the Tahoe.

He shook his head a little. "I'm sorry about what happened in the store," he told her quietly as he slid into the passenger seat.

"What?"

"About the...thing," he said, gesturing to the back seat where the bag from the toy store was sitting. "I don't know about all the little things you're supposed to do."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Never mind," he said, turning his attention out the window.

"I don't know what you're worried about, Grissom."  
  
"Remember when you told me that I looked like I wanted to dissect you instead of touch you?"

  
"Yeah. I'm sorry about that," she apologized sincerely.  
  
He shook his head. "No, you were right. I'd be like that with a child, too. I don't know about how people are supposed to act."

"No," she told him, "you proved me very wrong about that. When you care about someone, you'd do anything for them."

"When have I ever shown that?" he asked, curious.  
  
"All the time. When Warrick was in trouble. And Catherine told me about when her ex-husband showed up. You're an amazing man, Grissom. You have no idea what you're capable of, because you've never consciously tried before. You've never had to."

"I don't have to now," he pointed out.  
  
"And that's why it means so much that you are."

"An 'A' for effort isn't good enough when a child's well-being is at stake, Sara."

"You're saying that because of all the people you've seen never make the effort at all. You're confusing the two outcomes."

"Maybe," he shrugged, turning his attention back to the scene out the window. He felt Sara take his hand at a red light, and felt for the first time that they might be okay.

~*~*~*~*~

"He wasn't what I expected," he said that night. He loved that Sara was there in one of his shirts, smelling like his shampoo. 

"I know," Sara agreed from where she was lying on the other side of the bed, her wet hair falling in front of her eyes as she tried to read.

"Why are you reading that?"

"Because, you were involved in writing it."  
  
"No, I consulted on it."  
  
She shrugged and kept reading.

"This feels normal too," he told her.

"I know," she said again, laying the book down and moving closer to him. "I'm glad you talked me into staying," she whispered, wrapping her arms around him and listening to him breathe. "This is my new diversion," she added. "You should be pleased that I've found one."  
  
"What is?" he asked.

"You."

~*~*~*~*~

Author's notes: _What kind of ending was that? Where was the profundity? You try being profound with this cold. Go ahead, try!_

I can't give any timeline on chapter thirteen. Stuff going on here now that makes the stuff I said was going on around Easter seem like nothing. I might write it tomorrow to cheer myself up, might not write it for a couple weeks. We'll see.

Thanks for everything,  
Amber (April 14, 2002; 10:56 p.m.)


	13. Chapter Thirteen

Disclaimer: _I can hope all I want, I'll never be as rich as the people who own CSI and the associated characters. See how clever I was in showing I'm not one of said people? Okay, then. Let's go._

~*~*~*~*~

****

Give Me A Chance

__

Chapter Thirteen

~*~*~*~*~

Nick was standing in the doorway of Grissom's nursery, admiring the bright borders and new white furniture.

"Seriously, Grissom, I love that stuffed bug!" Nick's enthusiasm was draining on Grissom, who only had about an hour before his first shift back at work since the attack.

"Sara bought that almost a month ago," Grissom told him.

  
"Really?" Nick asked, a characteristic confused expression crossing his face. "It doesn't look like anything Sara has in the nursery at her place."

  
"Sara has a nursery?" Grissom asked. She had been helping him with this one, and he had not known that she was working on her own.

"Yeah. It's nicer than this, too," Nick observed. "Warmer."  
  
"Warmer?"  
  
"Yeah. Wood and pastels. Everything looks soft. It's a really nice room." Nick chose that moment to finally acknowledge Grissom's irritation, and misunderstood the cause. "There's nothing wrong with this room, though."

"I know there's not," Grissom replied, walking down the short hall to his living room.

"So..." Nick was following him. "Looking forward to getting back to the lab?"

  
"Looking forward to being useful again," Grissom answered, pulling on his jacket and grabbing his car keys.  
  
Nick looked at his watch. "It's early."  
  
"I have to talk to Ecklie before he leaves."  
  
"Oh. Is something wrong?" Nick asked.

  
"No." Grissom held the door open, then followed Nick outside.

"See you in a little while," Nick said as he unlocked his car door.

"Yeah," Grissom replied absently. He realized as he backed out of the driveway that he had been holding his breath. He slowly exhaled. He needed to steel himself for his conversation with Ecklie.

It was unsettling for him to have to turn to Ecklie for help, but he was aware that he did not really have a choice. Ecklie had agreed not to ruin the life that he and Sara were trying to build, but Grissom knew that it was going to be difficult to find a way around department regulations. If anyone could figure it out, unfortunately, it was Conrad Ecklie.

The parking lot of the lab seemed to appear too soon, and Grissom sat for a moment after he parked, trying to collect his thoughts.

His first priority was protecting Sara and their baby. The second was to make it so that he could be with them while doing so.

He needed Ecklie to accomplish either.

~*~*~*~*~

"I've been looking over the department's rules governing relationships," Ecklie told Grissom, who sat on the other side of his desk. When Grissom did not respond, the other man continued. "No one can say anything about you and Sara raising your child. There are privacy issues there, especially on her side."

Grissom nodded. "But they can say something about us having a relationship?"  
  
Ecklie sighed. "Yes. You're her boss. Wouldn't you rather just be in your child's life without complicating things?" he asked, his voice uncharacteristically hesitant.

"I love both of them," Grissom said, without thinking, feeling too helpless to care who he was talking to.

"I don't know what you're expecting," Ecklie said, frustrated. "It would be bad enough if you were just another investigator, that wouldn't be looked at very well either, but you're not. You're her _boss_. She's the lowest ranking person on your shift. It looks bad."

"So, that's it?"  
  
"Basically." Ecklie watched Grissom, then added, "Unless you give up your position."

Grissom stood up. "I figured there was a reason you were so willing to help me. I refuse to give my job up to you," he said before turning to leave. His position meant more to him than he had realized. It was not something he had planned for, but it was important to him now.

"There is a reason I'm helping you, but believe me, you have no idea what it is," Ecklie told him. "Anyway, can you think of anything else?" Ecklie asked.

"No," Grissom replied honestly, pausing in the doorway.

  
"Well, you could always marry her," Ecklie said, as he turned his attention to packing up his briefcase.

"What?" Grissom was facing him again.

Ecklie looked up from the files he was leafing through. "Marriage supercedes job titles."

"Why are you telling me this?" Grissom asked. "Just a few weeks ago you would have been happy to see Sara in prison and me fired."  
  
"I wouldn't have wanted her to go to prison," Ecklie said, intentionally avoiding addressing the second half of Grissom's comment. He stood, briefcase in hand. "I have to leave, and your shift started five minutes ago." He followed Grissom into the hall and locked his office door. "You should be happy that you'll have a chance to be in your child's life at all," he said softly, then walked away.

Grissom stared down the hall. It dawned on him how fortunate he was to be there, alive and relatively healthy again.  
  
He started toward the break room, where he could usually assume everyone was gathered before shift. He was looking forward to seeing Sara, who had not answered her phone at all that day. Finding out about the second nursery had somewhat unnerved him. He had assumed that they were preparing his house to be their home, but that was apparently not the case.

He walked into the break room, and was surprised to discover that Sara was not there. Warrick looked up. "Did you know Catherine thought your baby was mine?" he offered in place of a more conventional greeting.

"I'm not talking about that here," Grissom said absently. He was looking around the room as if he could make Sara appear.

"She's lying down in your office," Catherine told him, amused.

"Okay." He was trying to collect his thoughts. "Do you have tonight's cases?" he asked Catherine.

"Yeah. Nick, Warrick, and Sara are still working on one from last night. I figured you and I could take this." She handed him a folder. "Burglary at a hotel on the strip. If that's okay."  
  
"Yeah. Is Sara sick?"

  
"She just looked tired, so I made her lie down," Nick said without meeting his eyes.

Grissom nodded. "I'll go get her so you can get started. I'll be back, Catherine."  
  
A few minutes later he pushed his office door open. Sara was not sleeping, as he hoped, but was sitting behind his desk in the dark with one hand holding up her head and the other clutching a tissue.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, kneeling beside her.

  
"I'm so damn tired," she told him.

  
"Sara, you can take some time--"  
  
"Did you talk to Ecklie?" she interrupted him, looking up.  
  
"Yes."

"So did I. Weeks ago. That's why I've been getting my apartment ready for the baby, Grissom. Nick told me you were surprised. I already know we can't do this. I'm not going to give up my job here, and you sure as hell aren't."  
  
"I will if we need me to," he said, only realizing it as he said it.

"I don't want you to." She started to cry again. "I don't want anyone else ruining their lives for my benefit."  
  
"What are you talking about?"

  
She shook her head. "Never mind. I have to get to work. I'm late."

She stood up, and he did the same, holding her arm gently. "Sara, please tell me what's wrong." He had no idea what to do once he knew, but he needed to find out what was wrong.

"I'm not letting you give anything up for me or this baby, Grissom! You think you want this, you think you want to give up your world for our child, that's great. But what if next week, or in five months, or God help you in _thirty years_ you finally realize how stupid you were? I'm not going to be the person you blame, and I'm sure as hell not going to be the person you leave."

He did not know how to respond. He reached up, meaning to push her hair away from her damp cheeks, but she pulled away from him. "Sara, I don't know what you want from me."  
  
"Nothing," she whispered. "That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"So we're back to this?" he asked, unwarranted anger flooding his face and voice. "We're back to _not_ being together."  
  
"No, Grissom, I want to be with you. I just don't want to ruin another life."  
  
"Sara. The only thing that could ruin my life is not having you in it. Both of you."  
  
"Words, Grissom," she said bitterly. "You always have something to say."

"Not always." He took her hands and held them tightly. "I don't know what to say to you right now. You're wrong, because I don't know how to say this. And I didn't realize even until I told Ecklie today. I realized, but I didn't know for sure." He stopped.

"What?"  
  
He suddenly did not want to tell her that he was in love with her. He still could not believe he told Ecklie. "Tell me what other life or lives you think you've ruined," he said, changing the subject. She needed to talk anyway, and he would not feel right adding to her stress with his own feelings.  
  
"My parents. My mother never wanted me, Grissom. She never wanted to raise a child and she never wanted to be married. And my father, because of me, never got to know what it would be like to be with a woman who could bring herself to love him." He watched her fingers curl around his own. "I don't want to end up like her. I don't want to do that to our child, and I don't want to do that to you."

"Well, do you want and love our child?" he asked after a long silence.

"Yes." She met his eyes. "Please don't doubt that, Grissom."  
  
"I don't," he reassured her. He took a deep breath. He hated to have to ask this next question. "Do you think your mother could say the same, that she wanted you?"  
  
Sara shook her head. "No," she eventually managed to say. "I'm really not sure there was a day in her life that she wanted me, that she was glad I was her daughter. People may say that, but for me it was true."

"I'm sorry," Grissom said softly.

  
"Don't be." She looked better now. Her voice was stronger. "I had my father. I had one parent who always loved and wanted me. I only wish she wouldn't have waited until last night to leave him. I hope she's happy, now that she can't hurt him anymore. Whatever was missing in her life, I really hope she can finally find it."

  
He knew she meant it, but that it was difficult to say. He pressed her face against his chest and ran his fingers gently through her hair. He felt her relax against him, and he was thankful that he was there with her.  


"I told Ecklie that I loved you today," he said suddenly. It was as close as he could come to actually telling her at that moment.

"There are so many possible meanings to that statement, Grissom." She sounded exhausted. "But if I understood you correctly, I love you too."

He nodded. His eyes were wet, and he was thankful the lights were still off in the office. "I love you."

She kissed him softly. "That was really a sad performance for both of us, Grissom," she said quietly.  
  
"Well, it's not going to be the last time we say it." He put his hand on her stomach. She was not making much of an effort to hide her pregnancy, and he found that he was glad. There was no reason for her to. "I wish you would just marry me," he surprised himself by saying. "It wouldn't be that different from the last few weeks, and it would solve the problems here."

"You're assuming I wouldn't."

"Are you saying you would?"

"I don't know," she replied. "I've never been asked."

"_Would _you marry me?" It was a question, not an actual proposal.

She was amused, but knew not to show it. "I would. To make things easier for all three of us, if for no other reason."

  
He prepared himself for the hardest words of his life. While he always known, or at least assumed, that he would someday have this conversation with someone, he had always thought there would be endless time to prepare. There obviously was not. His left hand still rested on Sara, just inches from their child. His right hand was now holding her left. "Sara," he finally started, "I love you. I can't make it sound natural, and hopefully you realize I mean it regardless. I want to be your husband, to make you happy." She squeezed his hand, knowing that he was not done yet. "Will you please marry me?" he finished.

"Sara, are you coming?" Nick asked, flipping the switch by the door and flooding the room in fluorescent light.

She was startled, and jerked away from Grissom. "Yeah." She combed her fingers through her hair, and her eyes met Grissom's apologetically.

Sara and Nick turned to leave. "Grissom?" she called. He looked back up at her, and she gave him a small smile. "Yes."

~*~*~*~*~

Grissom stood beside Catherine at their crime scene, clutching the gray case tightly in his hand.

  
"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah." _Nothing's going to happen_, he told himself. He was trying to be rational, but he was still scared. He felt relatively safe in the hospital and even at home, but he was not sure how to deal with being at another scene.

Grissom's cell phone rang, and he quickly answered it. "Grissom."

"Hey. It's Warrick. This case is at a standstill. We need to wait on results. Do you two want help over there?"

Grissom looked around. Another hotel room. There was going to be a lot to collect. "Yeah, while you have time."

"Okay. We'll be there," Warrick said. Grissom heard him hang up.

"Who was that?" Catherine asked, pulling the camera away from her face and looking up.

  
"Warrick. They're going to help here until some results come back."  
  
"I'm glad Warrick isn't the baby's father," she said, continuing to photograph the corner of the room where a planter had been broken.

"So am I," Grissom said, and heard her laugh. He bent down to open his collection kit, and his hands froze on the latches. She chose that moment to turn to look at him.

  
"Grissom? Are you okay?" Catherine asked a second time.

He nodded, pulling his hands away with some effort. "I'm fine. I'm going to wait in the lobby until they get here."

"But I need help processing this scene," she said.

"Then wait a few minutes." He was in the hall before she could say anything else.

He watched Sara enter the lobby and walk over to him. "Where are Nick and Warrick?" he asked once she was beside him.  
  
"Separate car. They should be here any minute."

He nodded. "You might not have to marry me after all," he told her. He sounded angry and tired.   
  
"What do you mean?" Her eyes were still swollen and red, but now they were also looked very scared.  
  
"I can't do this anymore. Work, I mean. I can't even breathe up there." He was frustrated. "I can't believe I survived someone trying to kill me, but I can't even get my hands to...Forget it."  
  
She gently pressed his fingers against her lips, then held his hands between their bodies. "Whatever happens, I'll be here. I'm nervous about a lot of things that are might happen to us," she told him, "but I want to try it all with you."

"I don't want you worrying about my job, Sara."

"I'm not. I'm worried about _you_, because I know that what you do is important to you."

"It's not the most important thing," he said. It was true, but he also knew that there would be a horrible void in his life if he could not continue his work. "God, what if I can't do this anymore?"

"Even if you can't, it would only be temporarily." She moved his hand to her stomach again. "We don't want you to get upset."  
  
"I love you so much," he said. It seemed so much easier to say the second time. "I love the baby, too. I don't say it enough. Seems like such an abstract idea for some reason. But I really do."

"I understand. And I love you too, Grissom."

"Las Vegas used to be in the desert, right?" Nick asked from a few feet behind her. She turned around and laughed.

"You two are soaked," she observed. "You look awful."

"Thanks," Warrick replied dully.

  
"You two can't go into a crime scene like that," Grissom told them.

  
"We might as well go back to the lab, then," Nick said.

Warrick sighed and shifted his case from his right to left hand. "Let's go, then."  
  
"Hey!" Catherine called, appearing in the lobby. "I'm glad you guys are here. I have to go, the sitter called."  
  
"Is Lindsay okay?" Warrick asked.  
  
"I don't know. She fell. I mean, she'll be fine, but her wrist is broken and she hit her head." She was scared, and Warrick came over and put a hand on her arm.

"Here, I'll drive you." He put his arm around her shoulders and led her toward the front door. Grissom, Sara, and Nick watched him sit down his case and take off his jacket to put it over her head before they left.

"What was that?" Nick asked.

"I don't know," Grissom admitted.  
  
Sara looked amused, then suddenly alarmed. "There's no one watching the crime scene."  
  
"I need to get back up there then. Are you staying or going with Nick?" Grissom asked her.

She looked at Nick, who told her, "Stay here. You need to get the collections done. I can figure out the results myself if Greg ever gets done with them. I'll see you back at the lab." They watched him leave through the plate glass windows of the lobby, then returned to the room.

It was only a few minutes before Grissom found himself at the crime scene again, this time with Sara. "I wish I understood this more," he said quietly. "I know that nothing else is going to happen, but I'm still scared." It was almost as difficult to tell her that as it had been to say he loved her.  
  
"Fear is created in your mind," she told him. "We can't to rationalize it, as much as we want to. It's normal."

"I know." He sighed and started to collect some fibers he found noticed in the one of the hinges of the room's long cabinet. "When is it going to stop?" he asked, not really expecting her to answer.  
  
"Someday." It was an honest answer, and the best one she could give him.

He realized the truth of her statement, and decided to change the subject. "Seventeen weeks already. Can you feel anything yet?"

"No, and I would tell you if I did. Still, it will be any day now. And tomorrow will actually be seventeen weeks," she corrected. She was trying not to care that he had the day wrong.

  
"I know, Sara. I don't forget dates that are that important."

"The conception of your child."

  
"It was important to me before I knew that," he told her quietly.

  
She was surprised, but managed an embarrassed, "It was for me, too."

"Do you know what's going on with Warrick and Catherine?" he asked her, mercifully changing the subject.

"No. It was probably nothing. She needed a ride. Anyway, you know them a lot better than I do."  
  
"I haven't really talked to either of them in a long time, though."

"No one's going to fault you for that."

"I know."

She watched him. The conversation had distracted him somewhat, and he was working efficiently. "We're going to be okay, you know that?"  
  
He looked up and offered her a small smile. "We already are."


	14. Epilogue

Disclaimer: _If I owned C.S.I., Grissom and Sara would already be sleeping together, Catherine and Warrick would at least be flirting, and Julie would really be a character. Though I don't know what good she would do, because Nick would be dead. Since that isn't the world we tune into on Thursdays, I obviously don't own any of it._

There's a note following this epilogue. Please don't comment on it, but don't skip it either. Thank you. It's been a blast, and I love you guys.

~*~*~*~*~

Grissom glanced to the passenger seat. Sara was looking out the window at the newly-risen sun, counting the seconds in her mind until she would be home again. She twisted her wedding band, a variation on a security blanket, and he knew that is was not him she was thinking about. She was thinking about their son.

It was her first night back to work since little Dylan Grissom had been born. The first night she could not just walk quietly to his bassinet any time she wanted to.

It made him think about his own first night back, the night they had said "I love you." The night she agreed to be his wife. The night he had started to wonder if he was going to be able to return to his work. And he had been able to, though some nights were harder than others.

"Are you okay?" he asked gently, fingertips resting lightly on her arm.  
  
"Yeah." She smiled at him and pretended her eyes were dry. "I just didn't realize it was going to be this hard."

He nodded, sliding his fingers down to squeeze her hand. "I remember going back about a week after he was born."  
  
"Eight days," she interrupted, remembering clearly.

He nodded. "I knew that you'd be fine but I still didn't want to leave. I wanted to be right there with both of you."  
  
She smiled at him again. "Well, you're stuck with us now."

"Good."

She waited until he pulled the car into the driveway then turned to him, quickly pulling him into her arms. "I love you so much, Gil."

She rarely used his first name, and it was always something special when she did. "I love you, too, Sara," he said, hugging her tightly.

"I can't help but wonder what my life would be like without you. If you hadn't been able to hold on for us." It was something they had never really taken the time to discuss. There had been his recovery, their careers, the wedding, and finally the baby. "I don't even want to think about it."

  
"Then don't," he said, offering advice that he knew he could never follow himself.  
  
"It's not that easy. I watch you with our son...It's not just him. Even if I had never been pregnant. God, Gris, I need you, just for myself. I never want to go back to that. To life before."

"You're never going to," he assured her. "You're stuck with me, too."

"I could never do this on my own. If for no other reason than not wanting to have Nick baby-sit more than absolutely necessary," she said, trying to lighten the mood.

He looked toward the house, seeming to only then remember who was inside. "I don't see any evidence of fire or anything."

"Yet," she joked, freeing herself from his arms and climbing out of the car. He watched with loving amusement as she forced herself to walk calmly to the door rather than run.

"Hey, Mom," Nick said, opening the door for her.  
  
"Don't call me that. Where's Dylan?"

  
"Right here." Julie appeared behind him and carefully transferred the baby to Sara's arms. "I hope it's okay that I called Jules to come help me out."  
  
"That's fine, Nick," Sara said, only half-hearing him. "Thank you, Julie."

"Oh, you're welcome. Dylan here really is beautiful," she said, zipping her jacket over her light blouse.

"Thank you," Grissom said before lightly stroking his son's head. "You don't have to leave," he told her, looking up. "We'd like it if you stayed for breakfast."

Julie looked almost embarrassed. "Thank you, but I really should get going."

"You can stay, hun." Nick's hand rested on her arm. She shook her head, so he grabbed his own jacket. "I'll see you later."  
  
"You're not staying?" Grissom asked.

"No, I'm going to buy breakfast for the most beautiful woman I know."  
  
"No thanks, I already have plans," Sara said, a grin spreading across her face. The banter coming more or less automatically. Her attention was focused on her child and on Grissom's hand, which had surprised her by resting on her waist.

Nick laughed and put his arm around Julie, leading her outside. Grissom watched them for a moment, then closed the door. "Okay," he said after a few moments, "when did that happen?"

"A couple weeks ago. And from what I could pick up from talking to Nick the other night, it's been about three years coming."

  
"I'm glad Nick found her."  
  
Sara nodded. "Nice when people find each other, huh?"  
  
"And nice when people only wait _three_ years," he added, surprising both of them.

"Some things are worth the wait," she said simply, disappearing back the hall to put the baby in his crib. She returned a few minutes later. "Cute," she commented, tossing him the baseball pillow she had just found.

"It's more for your benefit than his," Grissom admitted.

"No, he likes it. It's soft." She paused. "You know what stuck in my mind? Nick said that Julie told him once, a long time ago, that she always felt better about herself when she was around him."

"I think it's like that when you love someone," he said. "Not that I have any idea what I'm talking about," he added a few moments later.  
  
"God, I wish I had that on tape. Gil Grissom: 'I have no idea what I'm talking about.'" She smiled, and he realized the truth in his statement.

It really was like that when you loved someone.


	15. End notes

The response to this story, just knowing that people have enjoyed it, means the world to me. Thank you for reading, thank you for liking it, thank you for commenting and offering suggestions and help. It's really meant a lot to me.

~Amber

  
Now, for some dedication. In alphabetical order by first name:

Alison, Amanda, Ashley (first person to ever read a story of mine and say it was good), Brittany, Devanie (for guidance from chapters nine through thirteen, not to mention support and approval and wonderful amounts of ego stroking), Jimmy (my brother), Jimmy (my nephew), Julie (not associated with 'Julie' in the story), "Mom", Mandy, Marsha, Mike (my third fan), Priscilla, Richard O'Brien, Sam (my second fan), Scott, Shawn (my fourth fan), Tif, Tracey, Valerie, Wayne.

AND ALL MY READERS!

And I'm sure I missed people, and I apologize.

Your humble servant,

Minttown1


End file.
